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OUR EUROPEAN 
NEIGHBOURS 

EDITED BY 

WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON 






GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 




pu^^i; 



OLD BRUNSWICK 



GERMAN LIFE 
IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY^ OS 

BY 

William Harbutt Dawson 

AUTHOR OF " GERMANY AND THE GERMANS," ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
NEW YORK AND LONDON 

^be 1R:ntcl?erbocker press 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONQRESS, 
Two Copies Receiveo 

APR. 6 1901 

Copyright entry 
CLASS Ct XXa N«. 

6y3f 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1901 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Zhe Itnkfceiboclier preaa, mew fort 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 1 
WHAT IS THE GERMAN'S FATHERLAND . . I 

CHAPTER 11 
SOCIAL DIVISIONS 22 

CHAPTER III 
THE "ARBEITER" ... . . 46 

CHAPTER IV 
RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR .... 68 

CHAPTER V 
MILITARY SERVICE 92 

CHAPTER VI 
PUBLIC EDUCATION 122 

CHAPTER VII 
RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THOUGHT . . . I42 



vi Contents 

PAGE 

CHAPTER VIU 
WOMAN AND THE HOME . . . . 182 

CHAPTER IX 
PLEASURES AND PASTIMES .... 207 

CHAPTER X 
THE BERLINER 236 

CHAPTER XI 
POLITICAL LIFE 2'^2 

CHAPTER XII 
LOCAL GOVERNMENT 269 

CHAPTER XIII 
THE NEWSPAPER AND ITS READERS . . }0\ 

INDEX . . . . . . . 319 




ILLUSTRATIONS 



OLD BRUNSWICK . . . Frontispiece 

A NUREMBERG PATRICIAN HOUSE . . . l8 

PEASANT COSTUMES 26 

PEASANT COSTUMES 40 

PEASANT COSTUMES 52 

A FETE CHAMPETRE 76 

Knaus. 

THE bride's DEPARTURE , . . . 80 
Fautier. 

REVIEW ON THE TEMPLEHOF FIELD, BERLIN . 94 

STUDENTS FENCING 120 

THE CIVIL MARRIAGE IN THE COUNTRY . . I48 

Vautier. 

A WESTPHALIAN FUNERAL . . . . I56 
F. Hiddemann 



Illustrations 



PAGE 

A BLACK FOREST PEASANT GIRL . . . 224 
C. Hey den. 

THE RIVER ROADS OF THE SPREE FOREST . 2^0 
Kretschmer. 

OLD NUREMBERG 234 

A VILLAGE INN 246 

Breitbach. 

THE IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT HOUSE, BERLIN . 266 




GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN AND 
COUNTRY 



GERMAN LIFE IN TOWN 
AND COUNTRY 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT IS THE GERMAN'S FATHERLAND 

IN one of the fervid songs which Ernst Moritz 
Arndt wrote to nerve his countrymen, in the 
time of national crisis and awakening nearly a 
century ago, the poet foretold the growth of a 
new and greater Germany, whose boundaries 
should be co-extensive with the German speech. 
"What is the German's fatherland?" he 
asked. The answer was that in the time which 
he knew to be coming there would be one father- 
land for all the Germanic races, which should 
be neither Prussia nor Austria, neither Bavaria 
nor Swabia, in particular, but these and every 
other piece of European territory on which Ger- 
man was the people's language. When Arndt 
sang, and prophesied, and fought for national 



2 German Life 

unity, Germany was little more than a geographi- 
cal expression, and more than half a century had 
yet to pass before the movement which he and 
countless other patriots, both of the pen and the 
sword, laboured and lived to advance, took 
practical form. Only in 1871 did Germany as 
we now know it become united, but the unity 
then cemented proved very different from that 
which most of the national leaders of Arndt's 
day anticipated, since the largest of the German 
States was excluded from the ring-fence which 
Prince Bismarck drew around the twenty-five 
sovereignties which still retained their independ- 
ence, and to which, with due regard to the tra- 
dition of the Holy Roman Empire of the German 
Nation, which came to an end in 1800, he gave 
the name of "German Empire." 

Important though the part which Germany 
has played in the politics of Europe during the 
generation which has succeeded the crowning 
act of unity, and great though the significance of 
the Empire for England in particular, both as an 
intellectual and an economic force, it may be 
questioned whether hazier ideas prevail among 
us concerning the constitution of any other part 
of Europe than concerning this country. The 
average mind vaguely conceives of Russia as an 
amorphous monster of a land extending from a 
vague line, running somewhere down the centre 
of Europe, eastward to the Ural Mountains ; and 



The German's Fatherland 3 

ignores the vast Russia wliichi spreads tlience 
into the illimitable tracts of Asia. So, too, the 
common view is apt to identify Germany with 
Prussia, and to overlook the fact that though 
Prussia is incontestably and beyond comparison 
the predominant partner, no fewer than twenty- 
four other separate States enter into the present 
Germanic Confederation, and that of these other 
States three are monarchies like Prussia itself, 
though the royal titles of the rulers of Bavaria, 
Saxony, and Wurtemberg are of later creation, 
being, indeed, part of the more durable handi- 
work of the first Napoleon. 

The confusion is increased by the titular posi- 
tion bestowed by the imperial constitution upon 
the kings of Prussia. In reality the position 
carries with it little personal power. It is a 
presidency, not a sovereignty. As German Em- 
peror the King of Prussia simply stands among 
the rest of the princes as primus inter pares. 
The real power belongs to the representative 
Council of the Federal Governments (the Bund- 
esrath) and to the elected Assembly of the Em- 
pire (the Reichstag), between which it is divided 
equally, so that the one is a perfect counterpoise 
to the other. In the Federal Council, Prussia 
naturally, owing to its size and population, en- 
joys a much larger voting power than any other 
State, — having seventeen members out of a total 
of fifty-eight ; but even so its strength is barely 



4 German Life 

more than one against three. The remaining 
members are divided in the following propor- 
tions, — the Kingdom of Bavaria follows Prussia 
with six, then come the Kingdoms of Saxony 
and Wurtemberg with four each, the Grand 
Duchies of Baden and Hesse with three each, 
the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg- Schwerin and 
the Duchy of Brunswick with two each, and the 
remaining seventeen States one each. Hence, 
even were the interests represented in the Fed- 
eral Council not so various, and in part so con- 
flicting, as they are, Prussia does not possess the 
means, even had it the will, to force upon the 
Imperial Government a special policy of its own 
which does not receive the full endorsement of a 
considerable number of its allies. 

Yet Prussia is none the less the backbone of 
the Empire, and it was by no accident that it fell 
to its sovereigns to head the movement which 
led the German States to unity, on the basis of a 
confederation under the perpetual presidency of 
the kings of Prussia. Strange and romantic is 
the story which tells how the patch of sandy 
plain lying between the Elbe and the Havel, 
which Henry the Fowler took from the Wends 
to rule himself a thousand years ago, developed 
into the monarchy of Prussia, which was to give 
imperial Germany its head. ' ' Good old Henry, " 
as Carlyle calls him, created margraves to watch 
his boundaries or marches, and keep his trouble- 



The German's Fatherland 5 

some neighbours in order. Among tlie mar- 
graviates were those of Meissen (the nucleus of 
Saxony), Austria, and Brandenburg. Four cent- 
uries later the Mark of Brandenburg reverted, 
owing to the failure of the ruling line, to the 
Emperor Sigismund, who, in consideration of 
money advanced and other services rendered, 
bestowed it, with the title of elector, in pledge — 
not to be redeemed — upon Frederick IV., Burg- 
grave of Nuremberg (141 5), a member of the 
Swabian family of Hohenzollern. Land was 
added to land, by marriage, by inheritance, by 
conquest, and especially Prussia, lying to the east, 
which was snapped off the old Polish kingdom. 
Finally the Elector of Brandenburg became King 
of Prussia by his own act of coronation (1701), 
and in the monarchy the old Mark was formally 
absorbed, though ever to be regarded as the 
heart of the realm and the bright, particular 
jewel of the Hohenzollern Crown. It was fitting, 
nay, was inevitable, that the line of rulers which 
had accomplished this marvellous expansion 
should lead Prussia to a still higher destiny. 

In his essay Shooting Niagara, and After — 
of which the title rather than the thoughts have 
been appreciated by the British public to whom 
it was addressed — Thomas Carlyle wrote (the 
date was 1867, just after the Austrian war) : "It 
was a clear prophecy that Germany would either 
become honourably Prussian or go to gradual 



6 German Life 

extinction ; but who of us expected that we 
ourselves, instead of our children's children, 
should live to behold it ; that a magnanimous 
and fortunate Herr von Bismarck, whose dis- 
praise was all in the newspapers, would, to his 
own amazement, find the thing was doable ; and 
would do it, do the essential of it, in a few of 
the current weeks?" And yet the becoming 
" honourably Prussian " is a fate which the non- 
Prussian portions of the Empire have consistently 
resisted with all their might, so that even now, 
when over three decades have passed, Germany 
has not yet disappeared in Prussia, nor has 
Prussia succeeded in inducing the allied States 
consciously to accept German development on 
specifically Prussian lines. 

It is necessary at the outset to iixake these 
points clear. Perhaps ninety times out of a hun- 
dred the allusions made in English newspapers 
to Germany and German institutions and cus-. 
toms relate merely to a part of the country, and, 
as often as not, words and acts attributed to the 
Emperor do not concern the Empire at all, but 
relate exclusively to the person and functions of 
the King of Prussia. The Emperor is, of course, 
Emperor every moment of his life, but in State 
affairs he possesses two distinct capacities, the 
imperial and the royals and the one has not 
necessarily even the remotest connexion with 
the other. Moreover, while the imperial senti- 



The German's Fatherland 7 

ment of the nation is on the whole strong and 
well-rooted, the individual life of the federated 
States and peoples has been but little influenced 
by the political unity which was consummated 
thirty years ago, and especially is this so in the 
larger States. The lustre of the Empire has not 
diminished the self-pride and self-consciousness 
of any of its component parts, and though im- 
perial laws have decreed that the German's fa- 
therland is coterminous with the entire Empire, 
there is still for each citizen a smaller and nearer 
and dearer fatherland — the monarchy or duchy 
or principality to which he and his fathers be- 
longed when the Empire was no more than an 
idea. The figure-head of the Empire may impress 
his mind ^nd imagination, but his affections 
belong to iiis own ruler, be his Court never so 
modest and his territories never so restricted. In 
Prussia only can it be said that the terms Emperor 
and King convey the same idea of sovereignty 
to the popular mind, since there is here identity 
of person, but outside Prussia there is still lack- 
ing to the imperial title and position the subtle 
magic and the deep sentiment which have 
gathered round the name and person of the 
immemorial " Landesvater." Travel in Bavaria, 
in Saxony, in Wurtemberg, and you cannot 
fail to be impressed by the State-consciousness, 
as opposed to the Empire-consciousness (if the 
words may be allowed) which characterises 



8 German Life 

the people. The Empire and the Emperor are 
gala-day institutions, — very real and dignified, 
yet uninspiring, and remote from the common 
interests of life. It is the territorial head of his 
own favoured section of the wide-reaching Em- 
pire who represents most really to the "pro- 
vincial" German the idea of sovereignty, and 
the persons and traditions, the fortunes and 
interests of his governing house, however lowly 
its place in the rank of potentates, mean infinitely 
more to him than the grandeur of the imperial 
fabric and the splendour of the imperial name. 

Viewed thoughtfully, all this is no misfortune, 
but the reverse. As imperial sovereignty is im- 
possible in Germany, it is obvious that the po- 
litical future of the country is best secured by the 
preservation in undiminished health and vigour 
in every individual State of the old sentiment of 
loyalty and personal attachment to the ruling 
head. We are learning that this sentiment 
affords one of the strongest guarantees of national 
stability in these days. It is one of the remarkable 
facts of modern times that, in spite of the spirit 
of unrest which is abroad, and of the strong 
democratic tendency which has revolutionised 
old systems of government, the monarchical 
principle appears to commend itself more and 
more strongly to all the most enlightened and 
progressive countries which have not done vio- 
lence to their natural development. The princi- 



The German's Fatherland 9 

palities of Germany passed through their time of 
trial half a century ago, and it was severe ; but 
by adapting themselves to the changed condi- 
tions, by making concessions, larger or smaller, 
to the nev^er conceptions of personal liberty 
which had become current, their position was 
strengthened rather than weakened, while their 
political efficiency was vastly increased. ' ' March 
Revolutions" , are so inconceivable in modern 
Germany that even in the residence-city of Berlin 
demonstration - loving Socialists are permitted 
once a year to pay reverent tribute, in the form 
of ribbon, wreath, and oration, to the memory 
of the insurrectionaries of 1848, who lie in a 
well-trimmed cemetery of their own. 

Yet one of the most canvassed questions 
in German politics has come to be this one of 
the permanency or otherwise of the Empire. It 
is wonderful how often the stability of the im- 
perial edifice is endangered in the eyes of short- 
sighted politicians and sensational journalists. 
To judge by the ill-balanced utterances of a 
certain section of the Press, — that which is con- 
sistently opposed to the Ministry of the day, — no 
great question of imperial policy ever crops up 
without the parliamentary system being exposed 
to a tension which it cannot possibly bear, and 
the Empire receiving a new and graver menace. 
The late Professor Rudolf von Gneist declared 
shortly before his death: "Discontent with the 



lo German Life 

course of public affairs is the natural condition 
of the German, varied only by rare episodes of 
patriotic enthusiasm." It is a severe criticism, 
but a true one. When any party powerful 
enough to be regarded as a serious factor in the 
political situation fails to get what it wants — ^to 
secure the passing of a pet measure, to force the 
Government to adopt its line of policy, or to re- 
frain from following some other — it is the com- 
monest thing in the world for its organs in the 
Press to startle the country with a solemn inti- 
mation that the Empire is in danger. Serious 
disaffection is reported to have broken out in the 
South German States. Particularism has risen 
from the grave to which it was unceremoniously 
committed in 1871. The Federal Government 
can with difficulty preserve even a threadbare 
appearance of harmony. The aristocracy is rest- 
ive ; the burgher parties are anxiously won- 
dering what the morrow will bring forth ; and 
the Social Democrats are already by anticipa- 
tion dividing the spoils of a sundered society. 
In short, the Empire is visibly going to pieces, 
and Crown and Sceptre are not worth a week's 
purchase. This, of course, according to the 
Press ! Here is an actual sample of the sort of 
foreboding in which newspapers of this stamp — 
and they are not all insignificant newspapers, 
either — have periodically indulged ever since the 
Empire became a fact : 



The German's Fatherland ii 

" Things have not for a long time been as they 
ought to be. The artificial rejoicings which a 
few Court purveyors and firms that deal in de- 
corations and illuminations propose to arrange 
on the return of the Emperor ought to cause no 
illusion on this point. The feeling in wide cir- 
cles, particularly in the South, is not favourable 
at the present moment to those who hold the 
reins of power in Prussia. The same may be 
said of many of the Courts in the German States, 
as anyone who watches the Press will easily 
discern." 

"Anyone who watches the Press !" That is, 
indeed, the secret of the whole matter. For any 
one who watches the Press, or, better still, takes 
the trouble to go behind the Press and ask on 
whose authority and responsibility these national 
crises are so portentously notified to an unsus- 
pecting but too easily disturbed public, will dis- 
cover the utter hollowness and cant of the whole 
system of sensation-mongering. Germany, like 
some other countries, suffers from newspaper 
vanity. There, as elsewhere, the journalist is 
apt to magnify his profession and position, and, 
under the influence of an unfortunate inflation of 
ideas, he falls at times into the error of imagin- 
ing that he, the journalist, is the true ruler, and 
that kings and governments and parliaments 
simply move to his hand like so many pieces on 
a chess-board. Such a misconception is excus- 



12 German Life 

able now and then, but when it becomes a set- 
tled conviction incalculable harm is done, and 
most of all to the newspaper, which abdicates a 
position which it may fill with honour, and in 
which it is at any rate taken seriously, in favour 
of one which it cannot really fill at all, and if 
it could, would occupy illegitimately and as a 
usurper. If anything could convince one of the 
safety of that much-threatened institution, the 
Empire, it is the success with which it has with- 
stood the multitudinous crises through which — 
according to neurotic journalism — it has passed 
during the thirty years of its existence. But, in 
truth, the Cassandras of the Press do not mean 
what they say, and as the years pass by their 
doleful predictions are more and more losing 
both terror and credence. 

It is undeniable that questions have arisen 
from time to time, and still arise, bringing to 
light the fact that State rights are not under the 
new regime just what they were under the old. 
Disputes have occurred over the jurisdiction of 
the Federal Council, as against the individual 
States which it represents, over the exact degree 
of independence reserved to those countries 
(Bavaria and Wurtemberg) which retained a 
qualified control of their postal or military sys- 
tems, and even over the constitutional position 
and prerogatives of the Emperor himself. But 
such disputes were and are inevitable, and not 



The German's Fatherland 13 

the most perfect imperial constitution humanly 
conceivable could have averted them. The 
wonder is that they have not been more numer- 
ous, and have on the whole produced so little 
visible friction amongst the federated States. 
But the Empire is stable and permanent because 
the prosperity of all the States, and the inde- 
pendence and the very life of most of them, 
depend upon its continuance. Political idealism 
apart, the instinct of self-preservation alone will 
compel the States to preserve the tie which has 
held them together for thirty years, and has 
vastly increased their strength, both collectively 
and individually. But there are more obvious 
and more tangible reasons to cause them to 
work together peaceably and with united will 
in the new traces. Since the Empire was estab- 
lished, the German States have enjoyed a meas- 
ure of material prosperity such as, relatively, 
has fallen to hardly another country in the world. 
In the practical arts and sciences, in commerce 
and industry, Germany has leaped to the very 
front rank of world-Powers. The example of 
Belgium and Switzerland has shown what is 
possible in the way of mercantile progress to 
small States whose people are imbued with 
Northern energy and enterprise, and it is no 
doubt true that even on the old basis — given 
the absence of internal disruption and external 
disturbance — Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria 



14 German Life 

would at least have won a creditable place in 
the international race for industrial prestige and 
wealth. But no one can doubt that the natural 
progress of these and other of the States has 
been immensely stimulated and increased by 
the political advantages which the creation of 
the Empire placed at their disposal, — the higher 
place which the States in combination took in 
the political councils of the world ; their unas- 
sailable defensive strength, which won for them, 
and compelled, attention and respect where 
hitherto the German name had carried little or 
no weight ; and the fact that the foreign policy 
of the Imperial Government, while primarily 
devoted, according to traditional principles, to 
maintaining territorial and treaty rights intact, 
has never ignored the opportunity of doing 
commerce a good turn. Prince Bismarck showed 
a true appreciation of Germany's political situa- 
tion as well as the instinct of a true statesman- 
ship when, after his retirement, he addressed 
(in 1895) to his fellow Prussians this appeal : 
"We Prussians, we Bavarians, we Saxons," he 
said, " we are Germany, and we remain so, 
and we must study Germany's interests. Cling 
fast to the Imperial idea, even in the Prussian 
Diet. Do not forget that you are citizens of 
an Empire, and to think of him who is your 
King and Emperor, and who has duties towards 
the Empire and his confederates. I beg you 



The German's Fatherland 15 

not to pursue a Brandenburg or a Prussian- 
national policy, but a German-imperial policy." 
Prussia is alive enough to the wisdom of this 
policy, while out of Prussia both its wisdom 
and its necessity are practically acknowledged. 
Prussia would be a Great Power even if it stood 
alone, but three-quarters of the smaller princi- 
palities would soon cease to be were the Empire 
to be dissolved. Hence, though the imperial 
idea may not have become so thoroughly 
naturalised as the best friends of German unity 
would like, and though slight and harmless 
ebullitions of particularism have not been rare 
in recent years, and may not be wanting in 
coming ones, there is little need to apprehend 
that the work of Prince Bismarck will ever be 
undone. 

That Germans in general indulge the ambition 
of further territorial expansion in Europe may 
well be questioned. None the less, there are 
national idealists — and some of them very 
practical idealists, with swords hanging at 
their sides — who profess to anticipate a time 
when the Empire will correspond far more 
faithfully than now to the prediction of Arndt. 
Pan-Germanism is an attractive, though at pre- 
sent a very select and uninfluential, cult ; and 
Pan-Germanism means, according to its inspir- 
ers and exponents, not simply a Germany which 
extends from the Rhine to the Vistula, but one 



1 6 German Life 

which includes Holland, Luxemburg, part of 
Belgium, and the bulk of Austria, — in the words 
of the patriot-poet, "Where'er resounds the 
German tongue." There is in wide circulation 
in Germany a "Pan-Germanic Atlas" {All- 
deutscher Atlas), which lays down in black and 
white this programme of a larger confederation. 
Taking time by the forelock, the authors of the 
atlas have already added to the Empire, so far 
as printed frontiers and colouring go, all those 
portions of the Continent which are inhabited 
overwhelmingly by the Germanic stock, what- 
ever their existing rulers and constitutional 
arrangements. It would be unfair to attribute 
to the Pan-Germanic movement serious sig- 
nificance, and unjust to assume that there lives 
any responsible statesman who regards it with 
anything more than a pious curiosity ; yet the 
fact that the idea underlying it is in the air gives 
to the subject at least a speculative interest. 

While there is no German who is not proud, 
even to a certain degree of overbearing vanity, 
of his country's ascent in the political scale, there 
are very many Germans, out of sympathy 
with material aims and successes of all kinds, 
who shrug their shoulders at the mention of 
its recent economic development. Trained in 
the school of the idealists, and forgetful of the 
realities of this most realistic age, they prefer 
to live in the poetry of the past, and would 



The German's Fatherland 17 

barter all the modern millionaires of Germany 
for the brain and soul of another Fichte, all its 
manufactories and workshops for one more 
play by Schiller. It is refreshing to find in a 
country which is at present the world's wonder 
for rapid advancement in commerce and wealth, 
so strong a counter-balance of idealism, which 
recks nought of gold and gain, and deplores 
as an irreparable misfortune Germany's rush to 
the front as a mercantile Power. None the less, 
the Germany of to-day is essentially a land of 
shrewd-headed, practical-minded, deft-handed 
men and women, who are determined that, 
in the race for material wealth, their country 
shall never be found far behind. Not only so, 
but the Governments have, in every possible 
way, encouraged the commercial and industrial 
spirit, conscious, not only that the extension 
of Germany's markets is the sole way of finding 
employment for, and thus keeping at home, 
its growing population, but also that the coun- 
try's costly military system can only be upheld 
so long as its material resources continue to 
increase, A flourishing commerce is the goose 
that lays the golden egg, and that is one reason 
why the bitter opposition of the agrarian classes 
to all recent measures for promoting trade at 
home and abroad has been resolutely brushed 
aside by the Imperial Government. 
Yet it has certainly not all been gain, this 



1 8 German Life 

wonderful progress which has made Germany 
a land of countless millionaires in marks, and 
has drawn upon it the impatience and dis- 
pleasure of not a few older and still wealthier 
competitors. The quiet and peaceful life of a 
generation ago has gone, and in its place are 
found the feverish haste and Ugly scramble for 
wealth which everywhere so conspicuously 
characterise the age of "getting on." The ex- 
ternal appearance of the country has changed. 
Not the capitals and cities only, but many a 
small provincial town, which once on a time 
abounded in historical, archaeological, and pictur- 
esque charm, bears witness to-day to the modern 
"progressive" spirit, which values everything 
according to its exchangeability for metallic 
wealth. There is, it is true, a mediaeval Germany 
which still defies end-of-the-century innovation 
with success. Go to Nuremberg, to Brunswick, 
to Augsburg, and you are at once transported into 
the age of the patricians, the Meistersinger, the 
cunning craftsmen, whose productions in wood, 
in glass, in enduring metals, both precious and 
base, and in decorative work are still the pride 
and wonder of industry and art. Many another 
ancient German town has so far compromised 
with modernity as to build outside the historic 
boundaries, so that the Neustadt ("New town " ) 
and the Altstadt (" Old town ") meet and merge 
without quarrelling ; and the effect of this 



:,.t' 




tHHi I [^ 
■111 J 




NUREMBERG PATRICIAN HOUSE 



The German's Fatherland 19 

happy arrangement is that the olden charm 
and picturesqueness are preserved in their en- 
tirety. While thus the nineteenth century suc- 
cessfully asserts its claim to recognition, the 
centuries of the Fuggers, of Diirer, of Hans Sachs, 
have been guarded with delicate and reverent 
hand. But in many towns it is otherwise, and 
where vandalism has triumphed the result is 
wreck and desolation indeed. 

There come to my mind at the moment two 
pictures — pictures of the same town, though 
they relate to different periods. Only a dozen 
years or so divide the one from the other, but 
the effect of that brief lapse of time was that of 
a fundamental transformation. It is a town in 
Central Germany, of great historic interest, which 
long seemed to have escaped altogether the 
tide of progress — for such let us call it — which 
began to sweep over the country at the begin- 
ning of the seventies. Situated amongst the 
primeval forest, the railway which passed by 
seemed almost to ignore its existence, as if it 
had neither time nor desire to cultivate an 
acquaintance with a place so old-fashioned. 
Passing into the town beneath the ancient Stadt- 
thor, you found yourself in a quaint, grass- 
grown market-place, which, save on fair days, 
and on summer evenings, when work was over, 
was wrapt in an air of old-world quiet and 
sleepiness. Mounting the hills at whose feet the 



20 German Life 

little town lies, you looked down upon an ex- 
panse of red roofs and rambling Gassen, with 
an ancient brick church rising in the middle, 
and the only sign of modernity the line of glit- 
tering rails that emerged from, and lost them- 
selves in, the forest in the distance. 

Twelve years passed, and what a change had 
occurred in the meantime ! The hand of the in- 
novator, the improver, the reformer, had been 
laid upon this unique relic of antiquity, and its 
charm, its picturesqueness, and its poetry had 
gone. Ancient buildings, whose eaves you 
might have touched with your walking-stick, 
had given place to huge stucco structures 
which seemed to dispute with the very hill-tops 
their place in the landscape. The old timbered 
cottages had for the most part disappeared, and 
gaudy villas reigned in their stead, made to 
order in vulgar styles, and flaunting themselves 
with all the airs of ill-bred snobbishness. The 
quiet shops of old, to which neither name nor 
sign had been attached, had given place to great 
modern bazaars. The pure, translucent atmo- 
sphere of the valley had been fouled by factory 
chimneys. In short, the sweet, peaceful, sim- 
ple old life had altogether passed away, and the 
town and everything in it had become sadly and 
tragically new. The fate of this town is the 
fate of many another, and it is but typical of the 
great economic upheavals which belong to 



The German's Fatherland 21 

the present generation. Germany has, in fact, 
entirely passed over to the industrial and com- 
mercial pursuits of nations. Not long ago, the 
late Imperial Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, de- 
clared it to be his conviction that genuine social 
progress had for the time been arrested, and the 
reason he gave was that the struggle for ma- 
terial advancement had checked the visible 
growth of all higher tendencies. Granting that 
Prince Hohenlohe's outlook may have been dark- 
ened by the distrust and apprehension which are 
more natural to age than to youth, nevertheless, 
no one can reasonably doubt that the spirit of 
materialism has laid hold upon Germany quite 
as strongly as upon other countries. What this 
means we shall know in coming years. 




^v^^^^^^^^ps^ 



CHAPTER II 

SOCIAL DIVISIONS 

SOCIAL divisions are very fine and precise, and 
jealously observed, in Germany. Tiie rea- 
son is not, hov/ever, tlie influence of wealth, 
but rather the fact that v/ealth in that unspoiled 
and unsophisticated land has not yet become the 
standard of personal worth, or the ultimate 
factor in the determination of social rank. A 
man may have at command the gold of a 
Croesus, but if he have nothing more he will 
knock in vain for entrance into good society. 
Hence it is, that between "society," as Germany 
defines it, and the moneyed commercial classes, 
there exists a gulf deeper than any which divides 
the dollar from the dime in England or the 
United States. It is not by any means jealousy 
of wealth which causes the official, the military, 
and the educated classes generally to surround 
themselves with a sort of Chinese wall, but jeal- 
ousy lest wealth should arrogate an influence 
which only belongs to it in societies of low or 



Social Divisions 23 

decadent culture. That there is just a faint sug- 
gestion of snobbishness in this scrupulous isola- 
tion and reserve must, perhaps, be conceded ; 
but in the main the prejudice is intensely honest 
and real, and it must be regarded as such by 
anyone who would truly comprehend the spirit 
of German society. The merely opulent have, 
of course, their compensations ; they cultivate 
their own cliques, entertain each other sump- 
tuously, and give the world to understand that 
they are of some account ; but they are not 
society, and they do not give the tone to the 
community of which they form part. You will 
hear this social ostracism of unadorned wealth 
indignantly, and even furiously, ridiculed by 
those who suffer from it, but the slight goes 
deep, and is accountable for a good deal of the 
disharmony which characterises class relation- 
ships in Germany. In the towns the sharp 
distinction which is drawn between education 
and money has simply the effect of allotting 
to each a social sphere of its own, and as the 
sphere is wide and varied, no great practical in- 
convenience is felt. In the country, however, 
the division is more searching, for there society 
is limited, and the operation of its unwritten 
laws is consequently more invidious. 

How little culture and money are necessary 
associates in Germany may be judged from an 
instructive classification of the nation which 



24 German Life 

was drawn up some time ago by Professor 
Gustav Schmoller, the well-known economist. 
Schmoller divides the people into four broad 
groups. The first is an "aristocratic and well- 
to-do" group of 250,000 families, consisting 
(such is his conclusion) of large landowners, 
princes of industry, the highest State officials, 
popular doctors, and artists, and also rentiers, 
with incomes exceeding ;^450 a year. Then he 
places in the "upper middle-class" 2,750,000 
families, including members of the landowning 
and commercial classes in medium circum- 
stances, the majority of higher officials, and 
many members of the liberal professions, with 
incomes ranging between ^135 and ;!^450. A 
third group takes in 3,750,000 families of the 
"lower middle-class," made up of farmers, art- 
isans, small tradespeople, officials, and the better- 
paid skilled work-people, with incomes ranging 
from £,()0 to ;!^i35. Lastly come 5,250,000 
families, which he assigns to the " lower 
classes," comprising principally wage-earners, 
but also the humbler officials, and artisans and 
peasants of the poorer class, whose incomes fall 
below ;^45 a year. The classification at best 
can, of course, only be approximately accurate, 
yet it is significant of the comparatively small 
incomes generally ruling in Germany amongst 
the classes superior in education and social rank. 
\ e- And here a noteworthy social characteristic 



Social Divisions 25 

must be named in passing. The existence of so 
many universities, scattered over the length and 
breadth of the land, has the effect of distributing 
culture more evenly than would otherwise be the 
case. A considerable educated society is for this 
reason found not merely in one or two choice 
centres, but in a multitude of towns, and in this 
respect provincial Germany — if I may use that 
inexact but convenient term, for the Berliner is 
really as much a provincial to the Dresdener as 
vice versa — presents marked contrast to provin- 
cial England. Moreover, the ubiquity and multi- 
plicity of Government officials, who are largely 
educated men, offer in almost the smallest of 
towns the nucleus of a cultivated circle, to 
which, thanks to the diffusion of university in- 
fluence, the normal elements of its population 
invariably contribute. Hence the vastly greater 
amenity of life for educated people in the Klein- 
stadt (little town) as compared with England, 
and the facility with which the new-comer of 
that class finds and settles down in a congenial 
social sphere. 

But the strongest and narrowest of all social 
prejudices are those which are indulged by the 
military class. It would be impossible to exag- 
gerate the feeling of superiority entertained by 
the officer towards civilians in general, saving 
those of higher official rank, between whom and 
himself he is compelled to recognise a certain 



26 German Life 

identity of interest, in virtue of a common rela- 
tionship to the Crown — not, be it noted, to the 
State, though it is the State which keeps both 
army and bureaucracy going. It is, of course, in 
garrison towns that military exclusiveness is car- 
ried to the farthest extreme. There but one 
society exists, and it is comprised of the ofiFicers' 
families. Into this charmed circle no one else 
can enter save by some rarely and discriminately 
bestowed act of grace. It lives its own separate 
life, and cultivates its own special interests, 
without the slightest thought of who exists or 
what goes on outside. To all intents and pur- 
poses, the ins and the outs, so far as this privileged 
coterie is concerned, constitute distinct socia. 
worlds, and if one talked German and the other 
Hebrew the alienage could not be more com- 
plete. The garrison town is thus no paradise 
for the civilian ; or, rather, its paradise is one 
which he may not enter. Like the Peri in 
Thomas Moore's poem, he must stand at the 
door disconsolate, with pain and tribulation pro- 
portionate to his ambition and vanity. There is, 
however, one bridge by which the civilian mav 
cross the gulf of pri'-' and prejudice and shak 
hands with the officer, and of course it is a gjolden 
one. The young officer is the most depi'-ed of 
matches, not because he is a fine fell*^ in him- 
self and dances like a sylph, but bf ^e of the 
distinction which belongs to his p'-jfession. A 



Social Divisions 27 

military marriage is the dream of every girl of 
social aspirations, but it is a dream which can 
only be said to have even a remote correspond- 
ence with the facts of life when her rank is 
something more than tolerable, and when, above 
all, her father is well provided with this world's 
goods and is willing to share them with a mar- 
tial son-in-law. For the junior officer excuse 
can be found for thus putting a price upon his 
own head. Unless he be possessed of private 
means marriage is impossible, for the pay is 
very small, and below a minimum income he 
is forbidden to covet a fireside of his own. It is 
only when the rank of captain is reached that 
this prohibition is removed, though even then 
the advantage of an independent fortune is a 
very real one. 

But here the officer does not stand alone. A 
peculiarity of professional life generally in Ger- 
many is the comparatively late age, according to 
English ideas, at which men seriously enter on 
their careers. The reason is the long and severe 
course of training which the State requires as a 
condition of entering any department of the public 
service or of following either the medical or the 
legal profession. At an age when with us many 
a man has already made a name, and won for 
himself a position which satisfies a fair human 
ambition, the German is still patiently and indus- 
triously overcoming the preliminary obstacles to 



28 German Life 

his onward march. Hence come the late mar- 
riages which are so common, and the universal 
disparity between the years of husband and wife. 
Both law and medicine are hedged round by 
conditions and requirements which make suc- 
cess a very real index of merit. Both the judge 
and the advocate of the future must have pur- 
sued systematic legal study at one or more of the 
universities and have passed searching examina- 
tions before being permitted to place foot on the 
lowest rung of the professional ladder. Practical 
experience in the courts of law follows, and 
only after further State examinations have been 
successfully gone through is the way to an inde- 
pendent career and a livelihood clear. The legal 
openings are many and various, though few are 
brilliant. The great majority of jurists elect to 
continue in the service of the State, for judge- 
ships of all degrees of importance and dignity, 
besides a multitude of administrative positions 
presuming legal training, are within reach ; but, 
so far as income goes, the private practitioner of 
ability has a far better prospect. 

The entrance to the medical profession is 
equally guarded by regulations. The theory of 
the law is that the practice of medicine, like 
every other occupation, is free, but this franchise 
is merely apparent, and only applies, as with us, 
to such irregular professors of the healing art as 
ca»-2 to dabble in drugs and lotions, and take the 



Social Divisions 29 

risk, which is a serious one. The use of any 
sort of title whatever is an illegality of the grav- 
est kind, unless the bearer has passed through 
the university course of study which the State 
prescribes, and has duly taken his diplomas. 
For it is the State, and no private corporation, 
however august, which confers on a man the 
right to dispense physic and to relieve you of 
your limbs, just as it is the State which author- 
ises him to contend, at the risk of his soul, that 
black is white and wrong right in the courts of 
law. Even in the very personal matter of the 
highness or lowness — and it is generally the 
latter — of his fees, the State Department for Pub- 
lic Health claims a right to be consulted in the 
rare cases where the local arrangements between 
the medical faculty and the public break down. 
How doctors charge has always been a problem 
of the utmost mystery to the average English 
citizen, who is more concerned to keep the fam- 
ily physician, much as he respects him, out of 
the house than to squabble about the precise 
meaning of the term " medical attendance." In 
Germany the matter is extremely simple. The 
family doctor does not charge at all. You fix 
your own fee, send it to him on New Year's Day, 
with a host of good wishes, and both parties to 
the transaction live happily for a whole twelve- 
month afterwards. It is, of course, understood 
that the sum handed to the doctor shall be in just 



30 German Life 

proportion to the services wliich have been ren- 
dered, so far as the fallible judgment of the debtor 
can determine so exact a point, but as the relation- 
ship between Hausarit and patient is of the 
usual friendly and intimate character, it is only 
in exceptional cases that misunderstandings 
occur. 

One result of the educational and legal restric- 
tions which surround the medical profession is 
that a very high standard of ability is preserved 
all round, and another is that the profession is 
much closer than in England, and its members 
not so numerous in proportion to population. 
Public confidence in the entire class of medical 
practitioners is unquestionably strengthened by 
the public conviction, which nothing can shake, 
that there is only one possible kind of doctor, 
and only one way of making him, — he must have 
passed through a university and taken there a 
full degree bearing the seal of State authority. 

No small proportion of the pseudo-doctors 
who thrive on the ailments and the credulity — 
mostly the latter — of English people of certain 
classes would in Germany speedily find them- 
selves in the clutches of the law, for the legal 
enactments against imposture of the kind are 
very drastic and do not stand much on 
ceremony. Not long ago a German provincial 
doctor, possessing the full medical qualifications, 
left the monotonous paths of orthodox pathology 



Social Divisions 31 

and began to practise homoeopathy, and soon he 
won such notoriety that persons consulted him 
from far and near. It was a very remunerative 
departure, for he posed now as a specialist, and 
charged fees accordingly. Unfortunately, a case 
in which he prescribed a phial of innocent glob- 
ules, where amputation of the limb was the 
proper and only cure, ended fatally, and a jealous 
Public Prosecutor took the matter up. The trial 
came on duly, and it proved a national nine days' 
wonder. All that could be alleged against the 
defendant was that homoeopathy was no substi- 
tute for surgery ; there was no suggestion that 
the medicines given, such as they were, had 
done injury ; yet the Court summarily sent the 
indiscreet practitioner to prison for several years, 
and dispossessed him of ;^i50 of his abundant 
profits, by way of fine. The public with one 
voice applauded the verdict, for on this subject 
of medical propriety public opinion is very 
strong in Germany, yet perhaps not more strong 
than wholesome. 

Even at their best, law and medicine do not in 
Germany offer the prizes which are attainable, 
by the privileged few, in England. The same 
may be said of literature, though with reserva- 
tions, for by all accounts there are gold mines as 
yet unexhausted in the domains of romance 
and drama, if no others. German letters have 
had their Grub Street era, but it is far behind. 



32 German Life 

Klopstock is said to liave received from his pub- 
lisher a beggarly six shillings a sheet for the first 
edition of his Messiade, and to have compounded 
for the second edition for a suit of clothes : and 
Schiller's early poverty is only a counterpart, 
though more tragic, considering the fine temper- 
ament of the man, of that of Johnson, Gold- 
smith, and many other English men of letters, 
whose contemporaries considerately starved them 
during their lifetime, so that by the crucifixion 
of the flesh the spirit might soar to higher alti- 
tudes. But literature is nowadays a decidedly 
remunerative pursuit for those who really can 
write, providing they write either novels or plays. 
It was recently stated on good authority that 
Gustav Freitag received as much as ^21,000 for 
one of his novels, that the royalties which fell to 
Fritz Reuter and his descendants for the former's 
Plattdeutsch (Low German) tales amounted to 
;^ioo,ooo, and that Hermann Sudermann has 
already derived over ;^i 5,000 from his plays. 
But successes like these are few and far between, 
and the earnings of the average German literary 
man are by no means brilliant. The yearly out- 
put of books is fabulous, but the library and the 
reading circle make havoc with the publishers' 
sales. Moreover, periodical literature does not 
offer those wonderful opportunities of earning 
";^6oo a year " ' lich are understood to come 
within reach of even the literary novice in the 



Social Divisions 33 

chosen home of the review and the magazine, 
when once he has bought the latest guide to lit- 
erary opulence and eminence. To the English 
author it must be a source of perpetual surprise 
that one-tenth of the splendid and scholarly 
books on scientific and technical subjects which 
see the light in Germany should pay the mere 
expenses of publication. 

Among the most interesting questions sug- 
gested by the treatment of social divisions are 
the position taken by the nobility and the unique 
and highly complicated system of titles which 
has grown up in all parts of the country. 
Notwithstanding that a German democratic 
pseudo-Parliament, born out of due time, de- 
creed half a century ago that titles should for 
ever be abolished, the nobility is held in undi- 
minished esteem. Even the democrat, in Ger- 
many as in other countries, dearly loves his 
lord, and shows an abnormal regard for titular 
honours of every kind. But the term nobility 
is one of wide significance and embraces very 
various and disproportionate degrees of social 
distinction. What is called the " high nobility " 
{der hohe Adel) embraces members of the ducal 
and princely {fiirstlich) houses — Germany has 
two kinds of princes — and the mediatised 
"countly" {grdflich) houses. The latter are 
the families which in the oV German Empire 
stood in a direct or "immediate" relation to 



34 German Life 

the Emperor and possessed both seat and vote 
in the Diet. Many of the ancient territorial 
houses, on the other hand, recognised superiors 
between themselves and the head of the Empire, 
to whom they were accordingly only mediately 
related. At the beginning of the present cent- 
ury, when the " Roman Empire of the German 
Nation " was dissolved, a large number of the 
petty rulers were deprived of their independ- 
ence and so became "mediatised." They belong 
still, however, to the "high nobility," and en- 
joy various more or less substantial privileges, 
as exemption from military service, membership 
of the First Chambers of their national Legisla- 
tures, and the recognition of equal birth with 
the reigning families. Important judicial func- 
tions were originally conceded to them, but 
these were abolished in 1877, and they have 
likewise been deprived of certain powers of 
control which they formerly exercised over 
Church and school. 

The lower, or inferior, nobility {der niedere 
Adel) was originally identical with the knight- 
hood, and comprised those who received knightly 
rank either from the Emperor (old style) or their 
own princes. Now it is graded into counts, 
barons {Freiherren) , knights, and noble persons 
without further title. A severe distinction is, 
however, drawn between the old lower and 
the new lower nobility. To the former are 



Social Divisions 35 

reckoned only such families as have borne noble 
rank for a long period of years, and only a 
member of the old nobility is conscious of the 
immense social gulf which separates him from 
the new creations. Again, a further distinction 
is drawn between the hereditary nobility and 
the "personal" nobility, the honour being re- 
stricted in the latter case to the life of the bearer. 
No special legal privileges are enjoyed by the 
members of the lower nobility, for though they 
alone are eligible to certain Court offices, and 
to the benefit of certain charitable foundations, 
these are only prescriptive rights and carry no 
inviolable title. 

Where titles are not enjoyed, the most obvious 
evidence of noble rank is the coupling of the 
prefix "von" to the surname. It is but a little 
word in itself, but socially it is a very large and 
powerful one. Let a man be able to sign him- 
self "von" and he will regard the world with 
very satisfied feelings. He cuts himself off by 
virtue of this one diminutive syllable from the 
entire mass of ordinary mortality, and there is 
no gift or faculty, no power or privilege, which 
he would exchange for it. But, while he would 
not barter his precious prefix away for any 
earthly bliss, he is willing enough, where cir- 
cumstances make it prudent so to do, to allow 
it to be shared by a partner in life who can help 
him to support it with becoming dignity ; and 



36 German Life 

the cases in which an arrangement of the kind 
would appear to be either prudent or com- 
pulsory are numerous. Often their "bit of 
nobility," to use the phrase of Goethe/ who 
himself was "von Goethe" by creation and not 
by inheritance, is the only worldly possession 
which remains to men and women who are 
prodigiously proud of their social superiority to 
the richest of their burgher neighbours. It is a 
human weakness which one may well regard with 
indulgence, especially when the impoverished 
noble can say with King Francis I., of France, 
"All is lost save honour." And yet the use 
of the magic " von " is not an exclusive mono- 
poly of the nobility, for there are burgher 
families which legitimately attach it to their 
names, just as there are noble families who do not 
employ it at all. In order to claim membership 
of the lower nobility by birth it is only neces- 
sary that the father shall already be nobilitated, 
but in the case of the higher nobility there must 

' See his Leiden des jungen {Verthers (book ii., date Decem- 
ber 24, 1 771) : " And the splendid misery ; the tedium 
amongst the repellent people who are found together here ! 
Their rank jealousy — how they watch and wait to gain a step 
over each other ; the most miserable and wretched passions, 
without any disguise. There is a woman, for example, who 
talks to everybody about her nobilitv and her land, so that 
every stranger must reflect : ' Here is a fool, who imagines 
the most wonderful things about her bit of nobility and the 
fame of her country,' " etc. 



Social Divisions 37 

be unquestionable noble blood on both sides. 
The right to confer this noble prefix lies with 
the prince 'of each State, but it is not largely 
exercised. In the more important States eleva- 
tion to the nobility is awarded as a mark of 
very exceptional distinction, where such a title 
as "Privy Councillor" or "Real Privy Council- 
lor," though both very dignified, would be 
inadequate, as, for example, in the case of great 
scientists and painters, and (much more rarely) 
of famous leaders of industry. The name of 
Hermann Helmholz, Anton Werner, and Werner 
Siemens are contemporary examples from these 
three departments of life. In more than one 
State that could be mentioned the noble "von " 
can be acquired by less arduous means, and the 
power of money has even been hinted at in this 
connexion, so that in such cases, as Lord Castle- 
reagh wittily said, to be without decoration 
of any kind C'est aussi une distinction. In 
Bavaria it was formerly the common practice of 
pushing tradesmen to address all officials as 
nobles, and many a plebeian breast glowed with 
pride at the complimentary attention, until the 
Government heard of the irregularity, and sternly 
bade its servants disown sham dignities. 

Great importance is attached to titles other 
than those of nobility, and to orders ; and he 
who has neither head nor tail to his name is not 
regarded as belonging to the elect of society. 



38 German Life 

'Prince Bismarck was the happy possessor of 
over fifty orders, both Prussian and foreign, not 
to speak of honorary doctorates of law, philo- 
sophy, medicine, and even of theology. So 
wide-reaching, however, is the State service 
that even officials of comparatively lowly posi- 
tion can always hope to receive sooner or later 
in their careers some titular sign that their work 
has been appreciated. The orders and merit 
badges of the Crown fall almost exclusively to 
the various branches of this service, — and espe- 
cially to the defensive, administrative, and judicial 
branches, and to academic teachers, since these 
include the great majority of scholars and scien- 
tists of distinction, — and they take the form of 
stars, crosses, ribbons, and medals, far more 
than a thousand of which are distributed in 
Prussia every year. "Decoration Day" {Or- 
densfest) is there identical with Coronation Day 
(January i8), and to the ceremony all the new 

^recipients of royal favour are invited. > The 
common official title is Councillor {Rath), which 
has many forms, as Government Councillor, 
Privy Councillor (which must not be confounded 
with the English title), Real Privy Councillor, 
Councillor of Legation, Councillor of State, Coun- 
cillor of War, Consistorial Councillor, Court 
Councillor, Councillor of Justice, School Coun- 
cillor, Sanitary Councillor, Medical Council- 
lor, Mining Councillor, Forest Councillor, Post 



I 



Social Divisions 39 

Councillor, while smaller Courts create such 
titles as Councillor and Higher Councillor of 
Studies, Councillor of Taxes, and Town Police 
Councillor. In Saxony the commonest title is 
Court Councillor {Hofrath), so called because 
its possessors seldom or never have any associa- 
tion, direct or indirect, with the Court ; it is 
simply a title of courtesy. Some of these Coun- 
cillor titles are meaningless and paltry, though 
nothing could convince their bearers of such a 
thing, but most of them are dignified and carry 
great social weight. A title which often crowns 
a successful mercantile career is Councillor of 
Commerce, to gain which distinction an ambi- 
tious man will often make princely contributions 
to public and benevolent projects. 

This superfluity of titles is embarrassing in 
more ways than one. In the first place, it is 
presumed that you are acquainted with the dig- 
nities of everybody with whom you come into 
contact, and, in the second, it is expected that 
you will address people accordingly. For to 
address a person, either orally or in writing, who 
either bears a title or belongs to the official or 
professional class, without prefixing his degree, 
might be a cause of great offence. Actions at 
law for disrespect are even instituted because 
of the withholding of titles rightfully acquired. 
Mr. A., who is a Court Councillor, must be 
spoken of as Mr. Court Councillor A. Doctor 



40 German Life 

of Philosophy B., who is a university professor 
and a Privy Councillor, expects to be addressed 
as Mr. Privy Councillor Professor Doctor B. 
Nor may Mrs. A. and Mrs. B. be overlooked, 
for they share their husbands' titular privileges ; 
the one is Mrs. Court Councillor A., and the 
/Other Mrs. Privy Councillor B. \ But the custom 
of prefixing to a name the degree of the bearer 
goes through the whole range of professional 
life. The convenient English "Reverend" has 
no equivalent, but instead the clergyman becomes 
Mr. Pastor So-and-so. Mr. Juvenal Brown, the 
editor of the local news-sheet, is addressed as 
Mr. Editor Brown, and on the same principle 
we have Mr. Stamp-Collector Jones, Mr. Post- 
master Robinson, Mr.. Road-Inspector Smith, 
and so on. And even where the claimants to 
this distinctive form of address are indifferent 
to it, their wives are not. In the medley of 
small-town society, formality of the kind is ob- 
served to the point of childishness. More of- 
fence is given, more heart-burning is generated, 
more friendships are destroyed, more women 
are made unhappy and sent home from the 
scene of social intercourse in chagrin and high 
dudgeon, through disregard of this trivial 
point, than through all other causes put to- 
gether. 

And here some of the customs peculiar to 
social intercourse are worthy of passing note. 



Social Divisions 41 

You address a lady whom you know but slightly 
as "Gracious lady" {gnddige Frait) or "Gra- 
cious Mademoiselle " {gnddiges FratUein), ac- 
cording as she may be married or single. In 
company you may introduce yourself — instead 
of staring vacantly into space — to a fellow-man 
by the mere statement of your name, which 
promptly brings the same valuable information 
from the person accosted, and the ice is broken 
at once. The older public salutations are going 
out of vogue, though Germans are not in gen- 
eral so prodigiously vacuous as to appeal to the 
weather, past, present, or future, when address- 
ing each other in the street. "Obedient serv- 
ant ! " is still a gallant greeting where the 
acquaintance is slight or where a lady is saluted. 
And here it should be remarked that to salute 
first in public is not the prerogative of the lady. 
The English practice is certainly a preferable one, 
inasmuch as it very properly protects a lady's 
dignity and choice in so important a matter as 
the regulation of her acquaintance. The super- 
ficial side of courtesy is best seen in letter-writing, 
— not, however, that the deference which is 
paid you in documents is always intentionally 
insincere ; it is simply allowed to run riot. The 
French have their own ideas on this subject, but 
the Germans rival them in their special way. 
Here is the beginning of an official letter which 
a person of educated rank may any day receive, 



42 German Life 

to his lasting edification : " To his highly well- 
born Herr Doctor [for the doctor may be taken 
for granted]. The undersigned permits himself 
devotedly to inform your highly well-born self 
that your honoured writing has received," etc. 
And the writer may, in conclusion, assure the 
highly well-born recipient of his "most excel- 
lent high esteem" and subscribe himself as 
"highly respectful and most obedient." 

Such a parade of compliment is very artificial, 
no doubt, and prosaic folk may see through its 
hollowness, but to the mass of men, who are 
not insusceptible to vanity, the rigours of official- 
ism are wondrously tempered by the elegant 
phrases in which they are expressed. The ob- 
sequious Jewish shopkeeper, however, is the 
only man who understands the gentle art of 
epistolary address completely. If you are a no- 
torious nobody he will address you as "Sir," or, 
at most, "Honoured sir," and sign himself, 
"Yours," or " Respectfully." If you are some- 
thing above a negation you will be addressed as 
"Very honoured sir," or "Well-born"; and 
should your calling be associated with letters 
you may rely on receiving the title of "Doctor," 
whether you have had it before or not, from 
your "highly respectful" or "most humble," 
but in all cases "very obliging," correspondent. 
But this is only the beginning of a gradation 
of compliment which in its higher forms would 



Social Divisions 43 

be sublime were it not ridiculous. Not only are 
these empty attentions given, but most people 
insist on receiving the exact degree of respect 
which they deem to be due to their position. A 
Berlin jury a few years ago gave a singular pro- 
nouncement on the subject. A lady accused a 
tradesman of an intended insult in that he had 
only signed himself in a letter "Most humbly," 
and not "Respectfully and most humbly," and 
the Court took the complainant's view and fined 
the offender, though on appeal its verdict was 
reversed. Polite usage requires a clergyman to 
be addressed with "Your reverence," instead of 
with the unoriginal "Dear sir." Where high 
officials have to be approached, deference be- 
comes doubly and trebly servile ; yet here there 
is a proper code of formality which may not be 
departed from on pain of giving dire offence. 
"Full of reverence," "Dutifully," and "Full of 
awe," are rising grades. Here is an address 
which is probably written hundreds of times 
a week in Germany, for it is the courtesy due 
to a well-known public official, whose rank is 
very far below that of a Minister of State : 
"Highly-reverenced Mr. Real Privy Councillor, 
highly-to-be-reverenced Mr. President." A Min- 
ister of State is addressed as " High and mighty," 
though the words may even be used in the 
superlative. A ruling Count is "Illustrious," a 
Prince (not of the royal blood) "Most Serene," 



44 German Life 

and a Prince of the blood "Royal Highness," 
while to a King are applied all the attributes of 
dignity, grandeur, and awe, in their supremest 
forms, which can well be expressed in poor, 
mortal words. 

Though titles and honours are so numerous 
and so various, the law accords to them all its 
jealous protection. In Prussia punishment by a 
heavy fine and imprisonment may be incurred 
by anyone who without right uses either title, 
"predicate of nobility," order, or other decora- 
tion, official designation or emblem, and even 
uniform. The laws on this subject would abolish 
not a few titular absurdities and impertinences 
common in England. For in Germany you may 
be sure that a man's title, whether official or 
professional, is genuine and legal, even though 
it should at times strike, you as incongruous. 
There are no sham doctors, whether of letters or 
medicine, no "professors" of music or art save 
those who are either attached to State academies, 
or have received the title by special favour of the 
Crown ; and even the smallest universities are 
nowadays scrupulously jealous of any disparage- 
ment of their degrees. Formerly the conditions 
of acquiring these were in some cases by no 
means onerous, but since the establishment of 
the Empire introduced the principle of one citi- 
zenship for the whole of Germany, a student can 
divide his semesters amongst as many universities 



Social Divisions 45 

as he chooses. Hence, the standard of the less 
efficient universities has had to be raised, and 
their examination tests to be made severer, 
though there is yet a decided difference between 
the best and the worst. 




CHAPTER III 

THE "ARBEITER" 

ALTHOUGH Germany has passed beyond re- 
call into the rank of industrial countries, the 
factory system took root there far later than in 
England, and its great expansion is of compar- 
atively recent date. Down to the end of the 
eighteenth century the majority of workmen be- 
longed to the artisan class, for the handicrafts 
still continued in health and vigour. Employers 
on a large scale were few in number. Small, in- 
dependent trades and workshops, in which the 
masters worked side by side with their journey- 
men and apprentices, were the rule. Even the 
old Guilds existed to some extent, though their 
vitality and power were exhausted, partly owing 
to organic defects which had long foreshadowed 
decay, and partly owing to the gradual rise of 
new economic and political conditions. On the 
land, labour was largely forced, and the peasantry 
remained in a condition of serfage, from which 
the Stein and Hardenberg laws of 1807 ^^d later 
46 



The "Arbeiter" 47 

were to relieve them. Neither in town nor in 
country was the modern relationship between 
employer and employed known. 

Hence the general conditions of labour in Ger- 
many to-day are precisely what would be ex- 
pected where the evolution of industry has been 
retarded. The number of hours in all industries 
and occupations alike is excessive, when com- 
pared with the English standard, though the 
German Arbeiter is in this respect no worse off 
than Continental workmen generally. Eleven 
hours a day may be taken as a fair average, but 
there is no free Saturday afternoon, though the 
full term is often curtailed somewhat on that 
day. In many factory districts the hours even 
run to twelve hours a day or more. There is, 
in fact, no legal limitation in the case of men, 
except that Sundays and festivals are now re- 
garded as statutory days of rest. Not only is the 
duration of work on the whole excessive, but 
the factories and workshops, in spite of legal 
regulations and Government inspection, often 
leave much to be desired on the score of healthi- 
ness and comfort. But amongst work-people 
the movement in favour of the legal restriction 
of the hours of toil is spreading rapidly. The 
Socialist party used to demand a ten-hour day,- 
but it now asks for a normal day of eight hours, 
on the plea that with such a limitation work 
would be provided for the unemployed and 



48 German Life 

over-production would be reduced. On the 
other hand, the trade-unions ask that the num- 
ber of hours may be fixed locally, so that the 
special circumstances of every district and 
every industry may be allowed to influence the 
determination of the normal day. Yet a long 
time must elapse before Germany will adopt the 
limitations already enforced in England. The 
manufacturers strongly oppose a legal reduction 
of hours, on the ground that they are striving to 
build up foreign trade, and that they are already 
heavily hampered by the obligations which are im- 
posed on them by the Industrial Insurance Laws. 
Very considerable restrictions are, on the 
other hand, placed upon the employment in fac- 
tories and workshops of children, young people, 
and women, in whose protection the German 
laws go much farther than can be expected in 
England for many years to come. It has even 
been proposed that married women should be 
excluded from the factories altogether. How 
such a far-going measure is regarded by the 
manufacturers may be judged from a petition 
recently addressed from Chemnitz to the Im- 
perial Chancellor. This significant document 
deprecated the placing of any additional limita- 
tions upon the employment of married women 
in factories, on the grounds that " wages are so 
low that it is a presupposition of marriage that 
the wife will take her place by her husband's 



The ''Arbeiter" 49 

side," and that "there is already a chronic in- 
sufficiency of economical female labour in the 
textile industry." 

But the most prolific source of industrial dis- 
content is the lowness of wages, rather than the 
long hours. The best-paid classes of work- 
people do not yet compare with the same classes 
in England, and the common rate of payment 
is very much lower. Even in the steel, iron, 
and coal industries the average earnings do not 
exceed /^i a week. In the textile trades this 
average is not reached. On the State railways 
porters are paid from 155. to ^i 35. a week, 
according to length of service ; stokers £1 to 
^i 8s., and engine drivers from ;£i }s. to ^2. 
Bricklayers in Berlin, where the wages for such 
work are the highest, receive 7<i. to ']^d. per 
hour, and work nine hours a day. It is, of 
course, in the rural districts, where decaying 
house industries are carried on, — in parts of 
Silesia and Saxony, on the Bohemian border, in 
the Erzgebirge, and the Riesengebirge — that 
the condition of the labouring population is 
most unfortunate. These small industries still 
employ over half a million people, in spite of 
the unequal odds against which they have to 
contend. The more important occupations are 
weaving and spinning ; hand and machine sew- 
ing ; paper-, metal-, and wood-working ; and 
musical instrument and clock making. 



50 German Life 

Alike in regard to wages, iiousing, and food — 
largely potatoes — the condition of the house- 
workers in most country districts is lamentable, 
and in towns it is not much better. It would, 
indeed, be difficult to exaggerate the misery 
which has for years been the lot of this class of 
workers. Where, as in Silesia, a hand-weaver 
is glad to earn 55. or 6s. for work which occu- 
pies nine days of from sixteen to eighteen hours 
(less than a halfpenny per hour), while his wife 
toils six hours a day for three weeks to com- 
plete a web which will bring her an equal sum, 
the problem how to make ends meet suggests 
to the social economist many reflections. Yet 
with all their poverty these people are self- 
reliant, upright, and not without the crowning 
virtue of self-respect. The Governments do 
their best to relieve exceptionally acute distress 
when it occurs, and early every winter the pro- 
spects of the poorer classes of house-workers 
located in remote districts are carefully inquired 
into, so that contingencies may be prepared for. 
Next to the house-workers, women are the 
worst paid, especially where, as often happens 
in towns, there is severe competition for the 
work offered. An investigation into the wages 
earned by sixty thousand women engaged in 
Berlin showed a weekly average of 105. to 115. 
The minimum fell to 85. and 75., and the highest 
rates were 155. to 175. Out of such earnings 



The ''Arbeiter" 51 

the female worker had to pay 85. to 95. for food 
and lodging. Beginners and unskilful work- 
people, however, can hardly earn enough to 
provide the absolute necessaries of existence. 
In Posen, women's wages for home-sewing only 
amount to from 6d. to ()d. per day of eleven 
hours. 

Nevertheless, industrial wages in Germany 
tend to increase : of this there cannot be a doubt. 
The development of the national industries, the 
extension of foreign trade, and the growing dis- 
satisfaction and assertiveness of the urban work- 
people have all contributed to this tendency. 
Strikes for better pay are no longer of rare oc- 
currence, and now that the conviction is spread- 
ing amongst working-men of all classes that 
Jack is as good as — or better than — his master, 
peaceful relationships between employers and 
employed can be counted on with no greater 
certainty than elsewhere. 

Yet it may be questioned whether the increase 
of wages has produced a corresponding improve- 
ment in the material condition of the working 
classes generally. Taking the country as a 
whole, the standard of life is certainly higher 
than twenty and even ten years ago, but the 
very causes which have enabled the working- 
man to secure better remuneration for his labour, 
coupled often with a shorter workday, have 
made demands upon his purse which have 



52 German Life 

largely nullified the advantages so gained. House 
rents in the towns have largely, in some cases 
ruinously, increased, and the rise in prices, con- 
sequent to some extent upon the drastic system 
of Protection which is now in force, has made 
many of the necessities and comforts of life 
dearer even to the producer himself. The fol- 
lowing actual weekly budget of a working-man 
of average earnings may be taken as fairly repre- 
sentative. The income was 2^s., and this was 
distributed as follows : — Rent, 35. 8^. ; taxes, 
4d. ; clothing, 2s. iid. ; coffee, 'j^d. ; potatoes, 
15. iild. ; cheese, 'j^d. ; butter and fat, 2s. 6d. ; 
beer, is. ^^d. ; bread, 15. 5^. ; meat, 15. )d. ; 
fire and light, 15. 4d. ; total, 185. id., so that 
there remained for pleasure, school expenses, 
and as savings towards old age, the sum of 
45. lid. 

The system of taking meals away from home 
prevails amongst the working classes of Ger- 
many to a large and increasing extent. Partly 
it is due to the long distances which urban 
work-people must travel to and from work ; 
partly to the fact that husband and wife are 
often equal contributors to the domestic purse, 
so that no one remains in charge of the home ; 
but another reason is the simpler fare with which 
the German workman is contented, and this he 
can obtain easily and inexpensively from the 
numberless refreshment-houses and taverns 



The ^'Arbeiter" 53 

which exist for his convenience, and thrive on 
his patronage. In many of the large towns 
excellent eating-houses of a homely kind are 
maintained by philanthropic societies, and that 
on a paying basis, at which wholesome food 
is offered at ridiculously low prices. At the so- 
called People's Kitchens in Berlin, a farthing will 
purchase a substantial roll of bread ; a half- 
penny commands a basin of soup ; and for a 
penny the diner may revel in the succulency and 
mystery of wonderfully named sausages, con- 
suming any reasonable number of huge chunks 
of loaf-bread ; while a set-dinner of truly Gar- 
gantuan proportions may be had for threepence. 
How far better the condition of the German 
labouring classes might have become had they 
endeavoured to work out their own salvation on 
the lines and by the measures adopted in Eng- 
land, is an interesting point of speculation. 
Where German work-people show to great 
disadvantage when compared with English is in 
their failure to take advantage of trade-union 
combinations. In political organisation and war- 
fare, and in mastery of political propagandism, 
the German workman is incomparable. In in- 
dustrial organisation and warfare — in spite of 
all his talk of solidarity — he is a child, and it is 
seldom that he can hold his own in any severe 
labour dispute which is push to the pitiful 
arbitrament of the strike. Tai strikes which 



54 German Life 

happened during five recent years in the Grand 
Duchy of Baden, in which are the industrial 
towns of Karlsruhe, Mannheim, Pforzheim, Frei- 
burg, and Constance, two-thirds ended in the 
total defeat of the work-people engaged. The 
greatest strike of modern times in Germany — 
that of the colliers of the Saar coal-field in 1892- 
93 — was begun under circumstances which to 
the organised and practical-minded English trade- 
unionist must have denoted the height of folly. 
The miners acted at the outset on no concerted 
plan ; no serious attempt was made to avert 
a struggle before the men went out ; and, 
strangest fact of all, the strikers had in readiness 
no funds whatever wherewith to carry on the 
struggle, and, while it lasted, had to subsist 
upon casual collections raised in all parts of Eu- 
rope. What made the strike the more remark- 
able was the fact that the employes of the State 
mines were the chief strikers, and by universal 
testimony they were better paid and better 
treated than any others in the Saar coal-field. 

Unpractical in this as in some other things, 
the German workman has lavished his energies 
and his means upon political organisations, 
which have made him discontented with his 
condition without showing him how to improve 
it. The triumphs of Social Democracy are a 
proof of his marvellous capacity for organisation, 
as well as of his enthusiasm for an idea, but 



The ''Arbeiter" 55 

Social Democracy has never yet added a cubit to 
his material stature. Ferdinand Lassalie, it is 
true, strove to win the German working classes 
for Socialism and Political Democracy, but hand 
in hand with his political agitation and ideals 
went practical measures — dreamy, let it be ad- 
mitted — the effect of which was to have been 
the economic advancement of the working 
classes, pari passu with their assumption of 
greater political power. Modern Social Demo- 
cracy — the Social Democracy of which Lieb- 
knecht and Bebel have been the principal 
exponents — has reversed this order. The ma- 
terial welfare of the working classes is, of course, 
its ultimate aim, but instead of aiming at progress 
line upon line, here a little and there a little, it 
has elected neither to ask nor to accept anything 
short of ultimate aims. It is as though the 
seekers after the Promised Land had sent all 
their tents and baggage on before, forgetting 
that the way thither lay through the wilderness- 
wandering and travail of many years. 

And what has Social Democracy done for the 
German working-man ? Given him an ideal. 
That is true, and it is something in this, intensely 
practical age. Made him a unit in a mighty party 
unique in the history of political organisation 
and propagandism. That is equally incontest- 
able. But when so much is admitted, the fact 
still remains that, so far as his material condition 



56 German Life 

goes, it has bettered him but little, if at all. I 
am aware that it may be objected that this is 
a low and inadequate way of judging a great 
political movement, the like of which the world 
has not before known. But the answer is that 
the avowed aim and end of Social Democracy is 
not a political ideal, is not some perfect con- 
dition of political government, but rather the 
improvement of the workman's material status, 

— that, and nothing more. Hence it is legit- 
imate to judge it, and to estimate its value for 
the working classes, by what it has done 
towards securing for its adherents at least the 
promise of worldly good, — the only good about 
which Social Democracy concerns itself, — which 
is its one and only justification. After all, the 
successes and failures of party life are as much 
dependent upon methods as upon men ; and 
the methods of popular advancement followed 
by the modern leaders of German Social Demo- 
cracy have by no means justified themselves. 
Had the incalculable funds and the vast amount 
of time and energy which have been expended 
in one way or another upon winning the work- 
ing classes to the belief in an economic phantom 

— or, if the expression be disputable, in an 
economic order which at best must be regarded 
as of a nature of the far-off divine event — been 
used in securing an immediate improvement in 
the general status of labour, with or without 



The ''Arbeiter" 57 

legislative assistance, a double purpose would 
have been achieved ; for then not only would 
the social conditions of the working classes have 
been ameliorated, but there would have been 
put into their hands long ago a lever of political 
influence superior to that now wielded by the 
Social Democratic organisation, which is vast 
indeed as to numbers yet powerless as a prac- 
tical legislative force. 

A movement of a very different kind — co- 
operation — has taken firm root in Germany ; 
but many years of education and agitation were 
necessary before the working classes could be 
induced to take Schulze-Delitsch's efforts seri- 
ously. There are now, however, some seven- 
teen thousand co-operative societies of all kinds ; 
though in Germany, as in England, there have 
been few experiments in productive co-opera- 
tion, partly owing to the financial difficulty, and 
partly to lack of faith in the principle. 

While excessive hours of work, and in many 
cases inadequate wages, keep the German work- 
ing classes back, and debar them from the 
possibilities of social advancement which would 
otherwise be within their reach, an equal evil is 
the costliness and defective character of their 
homes. Perhaps in no country does the hous- 
ing of the labourers and the poor better deserve 
to be characterised as a "burning question." 
In many large towns, working-men's families 



58 German Life 

are compelled to live under conditions which 
endanger health, and make even morality diffi- 
cult. In the great majority of cases the homes 
in which working people dwell in such towns — 
crowded tenements of distressing atmosphere at 
best, though often dark and humid cellars — are 
the utter despair of social reformers. A work- 
man in superior circumstances may secure for 
his family tolerable domestic surroundings by 
expending an unconscionably large part of his 
earnings on the one item of rent ; but there is 
a limit in rent-paying beyond which a working- 
man will not, cannot, should not have to go, 
and when this is reached, the dwelling has to 
be an inferior one ; which means, that the 
conditions under which he and those dependent 
on him live are not as favourable to the pre- 
servation of a high standard of life as they ought 
to be. Where the earnings are comparatively 
high an urban workman may be able to afford 
a house of three rooms, one a kitchen, but as 
a general rule two rooms have to serve for 
living, cooking, and sleeping, and in a great 
many instances the entire household economy is 
restricted to a single apartment. In all populous 
towns the labourers are found crowded in huge 
barracks, scores of families living in the same 
building, each with accommodation of the scanti- 
est and unhealthiest character. When a work- 
man, his wife, and his children are thus 



The "Arbeiter" 59 

"cribbed, cabined, and confined," the attrac- 
tions of the public-house exert upon the head 
of the household a charm which is too evident 
to need remark. 

Hence it is that bad housing, improvidence, 
intemperance, and crime go hand in hand. 
How completely the housing of the urban in- 
dustrial classes is at the mercy of their pockets 
is proved by the following estimate, prepared 
some years ago, and now under rather than 
over the mark, of the percentage of income paid 
in rent alone in four of the largest German 
towns : 

Yearly income. Berlin. Hamburg. Breslau. Leipzig. 

Under ;^30 .. 41.6 .. 26.5 .. 28.7 .. 29.9 
;^3ot0;^6o .. 24.7 .. 2}.^ .. 21.0 .. 21.2 
;^6otO;^90 .. 21.8 .. 18.9 .. 20.8 .. 19.9 

Taking the first two categories, as comprising 
the great bulk of the working classes, it appears 
that rent consumes, on the average, }^. i per cent, 
of the total income in Berlin, 25 in Hamburg and 
Breslau, and 25.5 in Leipzig. 

In small towns the housing conditions are, of 
course, far less objectionable, though every- 
where the growth of an urban community has 
been found to have the general result of deterior- 
ating the homes of the working classes and of 
diminishing that part of their wages which 



6o German Life 

should be devoted to food, clothing, and the 
miscellaneous necessities and conveniences of 
life. On the land a different order of things 
prevails. Here damp cellars and cold garrets 
are less met with, yet in some parts of the 
country an earthen floor is the rule rather than 
the exception in a labourer's cottage, and as soon 
as the more pressing problem of urban dwellings 
has been taken in hand, it will be found that 
even in the rural districts there is great room for 
improvement. A hopeful factor in the situation 
is the increasing interest which is taken in this 
question by employers of labour. A few years 
ago the employers who provided convenient 
and healthy homes for their work-people were 
few. To-day they are many, and the number 
increases. Krupps, who lay down great works 
and then build model towns for their employes, 
are, naturally, rare, but there are n. few large 
industrial or mining concerns with which are 
not connected workmen's dwellings offering 
advantages superior, both in a hygienic and a 
monetary sense, to those which can be expected 
from private speculators. Building societies are 
also beginning to enter this field of social re- 
form in the large towns. 

There are other shady places to paint in this 
picture of the industrial working-man. One of 
the darkest is the habit of drinking, common 
to the lower strata of his class. I do not 



The ''Arbeiter" 6i 

say drunkenness, because in Germany exces- 
sive indulgence in alcoholic liquors is compatible 
with a condition which could only by exag- 
geration be described as inebriety. Brandy 
{Schnapps), of course, does its work 'every- 
where the same, without respect of person, and 
where, as in North and East Prussia, dram- 
drinking is common, the statistics of indus- 
trial intemperance mount high. Yet, with- 
out getting absolutely drunk, the average 
working-man often spends on beer a far greater 
portion of his earnings than is just either to his 
health or to his hard-working wife and his large 
family. 

The common dancing saloon is another source 
of evil. There are dancing-rooms of a certain 
respectability, but the average haunt is a place 
where delicacy, virtue, and chastity in man and 
woman are ' Ttered in exchange for an eve- 
ning's mad and furious riot. On Saturday 
evening (less nowadays on Sunday) young 
people crowd to these places after the fatiguing 
exertion of a long week of work, and plunge 
with passionate eagerness into their question- 
able delights. Resorting thither with weariness 
weighing upon body and spirit, with physical 
and moral system equally enervated, it is little 
wonder that the giddy dance and the excite- 
ment of physical pleasure stimulate unrestraint, 
and that the dancing evenings so often prove 



62 German Life 

ruinous to character and sends multitudes of 
young men and women into life under the 
burden of a curse. 

The modern development of industry is also 
exerting the same disintegrating influence upon 
German family life which is noticeable in other 
countries. In the days of the old handicrafts 
the position of the young apprentice was far 
less free than is that of the young factory operat- 
ive of to-day. He was generally bound for a 
certain number of years, during which time his 
place in the home of parent or employer was 
distinctly a dependent one. The discipline was 
useful, inasmuch as it had a tendency to tide 
the youth safely over the formative period of 
life, and the straitened circumstances in which 
he was apt to live helped the cultivation of 
habits of economy and providence. Besides, 
the knowledge that, all things being equal, his 
early years of tutelage and probation were but 
a stage on the way to journeymanship and 
mastership, gave him a respect for his position, 
and so for himself, which had a distinct moral 
value. But until he was professionally of age 
he continued subject both to his employer and 
to the ruling power at home, which then ruled 
indeed. Nowadays, however, there exists no 
genuine counterpart of the apprentice of old ; 
and parental government is rapidly going out of 
fashion. It is a common complaint that the 



The ''Arbeiter" 63 

factory, by engaging so large an amount of 
juvenile labour and paying it (comparably with 
former times) so highly, has done away with 
youth in both sexes, and has fatally weakened 
both parental authority and the family tie. 
Young people never before became so early 
independent, or so early shook themselves free 
from the restraints and associations of home. 
The industrial districts of Germany are, in fact, 
having the same experience and are paying 
the same penalty which have already befallen 
countries of prior industrial development. From 
a very early age the young factory operative is 
master of his own destinies by virtue of his 
earning power, and he uses his independence 
with wisdom or folly according to the character 
and strength of the influences which played on 
him before he tasted the fruit of the dangerous 
tree of liberty. Here we have one reason — 
I grant it is not the only one — why there are 
continually seen flocking to the camp of Social 
Democracy crowds of young men whose heads 
are filled with crude and often wild notions, 
and who are the ready and credulous followers 
of any voluble prophet of a good time that is 
to come without any special exertion on their 
part. 

The other sex has also a penalty of its own to 
pay. In the industrial classes the cultivation of 
the simple arts of domestic life is no longer 



64 German Life 

followed with the old interest and eagerness, for 
that is impossible. Sent out from the home to 
the factory and workshop as soon as the school 
years are over, the girl of thirteen or fourteen 
has little opportunity of learning the mastery of 
household management, and the effect is seen in 
the deterioration of domestic order and industry. 
Happily, this change for the worse has not been 
ignored, and serious efforts are being made to 
counteract it as far as possible. Greater atten- 
tion is nowadays given to domestic economy in 
the elementary and continuation schools, not 
merely in the way of instilling a certain amount 
of theoretical knowledge of the chemical consti- 
tution of foods and the comparative digestibility 
of beef and bacon, — knowledge which is doubt- 
less useful in its way, but which alone will never 
make a working-man's home happy, — but by 
careful practical instruction in housewifely 
duties, cooking, sewing, dressmaking, account- 
keeping, and domestic art and industry gene- 
rally. In girls beyond school age countless 
benevolent institutions (called "Household In- 
dustry Societies " and the like) interest them- 
selves to the same end all over the country. 

But this is not the only kind of unselfish work 
which is nowadays done in Germany for the 
working classes, quite outside the ordinary phil- 
anthropic channels. The "Central Association 
for the Welfare of the Working Classes " and 



The ''Arbeiter" 65 

the " Association for Social Politics " (I translate 
their names literally), both of which are national 
in scope, have accomplished results the import- 
ance of which it would be difficult to overestim- 
ate, — the one on practical lines, and the other 
by careful investigation into social and industrial 
questions, periodical conferences, and publica- 
tions of a social-reform character. The former 
of these organisations circulates at least three 
cheap journals for the elevation and entertain- 
ment of the labouring classes — The Workman's 
Friend, The People's Welfare, and Social Corre- 
spondence. Much is done both by public and 
private bodies for popular education and the dis- 
semination of good literature amongst the people 
by free libraries, reading-rooms, and circulating 
libraries. An excellent work in this way has for 
years been done by the Free German Institute, 
whose centre is Frankfort - on - the - Main, the 
Humboldt Academy of Berlin, which perpetuates 
the enlightened ideals of Wilhelm von Hum- 
boldt, one of the founders of Berlin University, 
the Gehe Institute of Dresden, the Coburg Lec- 
ture Association, and the Societies for the Exten- 
sion of Popular Education. The Berlin Society 
bearing the last-named title collects second-hand 
books of an instructive character for presentation 
to backward villages where it is known that 
they will be welcome. 

Curiously enough, however, the University 



66 German Life 

Extension movement, as understood in England, 
has not had a very prosperous career in Germany. 
In several university tov/ns the movement has 
been established, but in others efforts in this 
direction have failed, and, in general, the move- 
ment has been received in a spirit of suspicion 
and hostility. 

In the Conservative camp the fear is enter- 
tained that the working classes would be forti- 
fied in their Socialistic predispositions by the 
teaching of professors themselves tainted by 
economic heresy, while in the religious domain 
a large section of the Evangelical laity distrusts 
the, to them, impious criticism which advanced 
theological teachers are apt to pass upon the 
Sacred Writings. Yet the movement is spread- 
ing, and as time passes much of the present 
prejudice wili be lived down. More consciously 
perhaps than in England, the University Exten- 
sionists are endeavouring to fulfil a distinct social 
as well as an educational purpose. The move- 
ment has been taken up in the belief that it will 
to some extent bridge over the chasm which di- 
vides the educated from the uneducated classes, 
and so create between the two an outward bond 
of sympathy which has hitherto been sadly lack- 
ing. The movement is, indeed, a sort of answer 
to the Socialist agitation. The Social Democratic 
party aims at economic equalisation, — the dis- 
possessed millions are to be levelled up to the 



The ''Arbeiter" 67 

possessing thousands by the levelling down of 
the latter. The aim of the friends of University 
Extension is not, indeed, intellectual or even 
educational equality, but to enable the less 
favoured sections of society to share more liber- 
ally in the resources of culture, which the let- 
tered classes are too apt to regard as in a peculiar 
way their exclusive possession. The import- 
ance of such a social reconciliation as this aim, 
if realised, would effect is undeniable ; for, 
considerable as are the differences which the 
possession or non-possession of material wealth 
makes between men, they are, in reality, only 
outward and artificial, and at the utmost show 
themselves in things which leave untouched the 
true content and value of life. Infinitely greater 
are the differences of education and culture, 
which place men not merely in separate classes, 
but in separate worlds ; and it is the belief of 
the University Extensionists of Germany that 
the wider and more embracing the republic of 
knowledge can be made, the more will social 
antipathies be reduced, inasmuch as knowledge 
of necessity binds where wealth as surely di- 
vides. The expectation thus indulged may 
seem too sanguine, but the genuine philanthropy 
and fresh enthusiasm which are at the basis of 
this movement will doubtless carry its authors 
far on their mission of enlightenment and good- 
will. 



CHAPTER IV 

RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR 

WHILE the towns are given over to modern 
progress, and all of bad as well as good 
repute which the invidious term suggests, the 
rural districts go their quiet way as of old. It 
may be questioned whether anywhere in Europe 
a healthier, more moral life prevails than that 
which is to be met with in the little towns and 
villages of Germany. The life may be narrow 
and stunted, the intellectual outlook may be very 
limited, the ideals may be crude, and unchang- 
ing dulness may have claimed such places as 
its own, yet, if relative happiness, contentment, 
and freedom from anxiety belong to a rational 
scheme of life, the countryman and not the 
townsman is the true philosopher. In some 
districts a state of things exists which might ap- 
pear to approach an ideal social order. Many 
villages still possess common land enough to af- 
ford to each head of a family free pasturage for 
both cattle and sheep, as well as forest which 
68 



I 



Rural Life and Labour 69 

not only provides their households with all neces- 
sary fuel, but, thanks to the right of selling timber, 
reduces local taxation to a minimum or liquidates 
it altogether. It might be an exaggeration to say 
"Once a peasant always a peasant," for the rus- 
tic who changes country for town life often shows 
a singular adaptability to urban conditions ; but 
the rural spirit is remarkably strong and tenacious, 
and, in spite of his transplanting, many a land- 
born metropolitan remains in every essential 
characteristic a villager to the end of his days. 

I happened to know one such, and I have sel- 
dom come across a stronger individuality. The 
land offering him little prospect of meeting 
permanently even the modest needs of his frugal 
life — for his home was in one of the more back- 
ward agricultural districts of East Prussia — he 
threw up farming when nearing middle-age and 
migrated to Berlin, where he in time set up a 
small business of his own. He had carried this 
on for a generation when I knew him, and the 
one anxiety of his life was to save sufficient 
money to get back to the village of his younger 
days. The calling by which he earned his daily 
bread, and a little more when times were good, 
had no interest for him save in so far as it served 
this end. He hated towns and town life, and 
bore with his urban lot only because it offered the 
hope of release from it one day. He was highly 
intelligent, yet the affairs of State possessed 



70 German Life 

for him not a tithe of the interest which be- 
longed to those of his native village. He 
kept himself thoroughly informed of all that 
took place there ; he knew all the new-comers 
by name and all who passed away ; he read his 
Dorf-Zeitimg {tillage Gazette — a popular little 
newspaper devoted to peasant life) with scrupul- 
ous regularity, and treasured the past volumes 
as though they had been rare first editions ; in 
a word, he was heart and soul a Landmann, and 
in temperament was the beau-ideal of rural tran- 
quillity and unsophisticated innocence, though 
so large a part of his life had been passed in the 
capital. When 1 knew him he was not far from 
the realisation of his ambition. His savings 
were nearly sufficient for the support of his de- 
clining years, and before long he hoped to go 
back to the little village in East Prussia whence 
he had regretfully come, and, settled there, he 
intended to begin life again at seventy. 

As with individuals so with communities : the 
old order fights tenaciously against the new. 
There are yet to be found, scattered all over 
Germany, towns even of quite respectable size 
and importance which yet, in all outward ap- 
pearance, have failed to embrace the modern 
spirit, and seem, in their old-world sleepiness, 
simplicity, and primness, like relics of a bygone 
social order. You may pass through the streets 
of such a town and never know, from any 



Rural Life and Labour 71 

external evidence, that either shop or warehouse 
ministers to local needs. Places of the kind are 
there in number sufficient, but there is not a 
sign-board, much less a display of goods, to 
denote their whereabouts, — nothing, in fact, to 
distinguish them on the outside from private 
dwellings. The streets are cobbled right across 
from house to house ; well-kept gardens grace 
the homes of the tradesman and labourer alike ; 
there are no obtrusive hoardings, no sky-signs, 
no placards of any kind, save the decorous an- 
nouncements of the administrative or police au- 
thorities, — in a word, the bill-sticker's art, 
whether in its higher or lower forms, is entirely 
unappreciated. In many parts of rural Germany 
you will find the night-watchman still a re- 
spected institution, and as you pass a sleepless 
night you may hear the hours cried in quaint 
verse, that recalls the old-fashioned English waits 
of Christmas time. Here is such a cry, freely 
translated : 

" Listen, gentles, while I tell 

The parish clock has just struck one, 
Mind your fires, your lights as well. 
That to the town no harm be done." 

Injunctions of this sort date, of course, from the 
time when wood and thatch were the common 
building material, even for houses of a better 
class ; but though the watchman's nocturnal 



72 German Life 

patrol serves now no practical purpose, the en- 
ergy of local custom is so persistent that the 
superfluous functionary survives. Even in the 
largest towns imposing officials of the kind 
continue still to descend upon the streets at a 
certain hour of the night, and, clad in huge 
overcoats and distinctive head-dress, with sabre 
on side and massive keys dangling from the 
waist, go from house to house, carefully locking 
the outer doors. 

Nor has the old-fashioned rural costume by 
any means disappeared. The traveller who 
transects Germany by one of the great trunk 
lines passing from west to east or from north to 
south is pretty sure to be attracted at some sta- 
tion or other by quaintly attired countrymen or 
countrywomen. But in order to see the peasant 
costumes at their best, it is necessary to leave the 
beaten tracks, and go inland, to sleepy villages in 
sequestered valleys or away amongst the hills, — 
in the Bavarian Highlands, in the Black Forest, in 
the Spree Forest, or Mecklenburg. The variety 
of dress is remarkable, and happily rural life still 
possesses such a strong individuality that, in 
spite of the ridicule which they frequently meet in 
towns, the older peasants show little disinclina- 
tion to discard their traditional attire in favour of 
the unromantic and inartistic garments which 
modern fashion devises for the disfigurement of 
the human form divine. Here and there, of 



Rural Life and Labour "iz 

course, extravagances in rural costume are found, 
as in a district of the Grand Ducliy of Baden, 
where the pride or vanity of the peasant wo- 
man centres in the huge proportions of her 
hat, which is often so enveloped in pompons as 
to weigh several pounds. But in general the 
Volhstracht is an innocent survival of the prim- 
itive epoch of peasant life which it were good 
policy carefully to cultivate. The artificiality 
of modern civilisation makes everywhere for 
uniformity, and the distinctive customs of the 
country are not now so numerous that any one 
— let its character only be harmless — can be 
wisely surrendered to the prejudice or intoler- 
ance of an unthinking age. Happily, efforts are 
being made in many parts of Germany to per- 
petuate the costumes of long ago, by encour- 
aging their use both by old and young. 

Even where primitive simplicity is disappear- 
ing amongst the people, indelible memories of 
its past influence still exist in their midst. In 
many a rural village in South Germany may be 
read upon the timbers of the houses the texts 
and quaint proverbs in which a former age used 
to express its natural piety and mother wit. 
Sometimes these carved sayings take a less ami- 
able form, as in a noli me tangere verse like the 
following : 

" Ich achte meine Hasser 
Gleich wie das Regenwasser, 



74 German Life 

Dass von den Dachern fliesst ; 
Ob sie mich gleich neiden, 
So miissen sie doch leiden 
Dass Gott mein Heifer ist," 

which may be translated : 

" My enemies are to me 
Just like the rain 
Which falls from the roof. 
Though they should envy me, 
They must at least learn 
That God is my helper." 

Again : 

" Wer iibel redet von mir und den Meinen, 
Der gehe nach Haus und betrachte die Seinen ; 
Find't er um denen kein Gebrechen, 
So kann er frei von mir und den Meinen sprechen." 

A free translation would be : 

" Who thinks evil of me and mine, 
Let him go home and examine his own ; 
If there he finds no fault, 
Then he is at liberty to criticise us." 

The class-consciousness of the peasant — an ex- 
cellent quality, not everywhere found — finds 
utterance in verses of this kind : 

" Wenn doch Gott und der Bauer nicht war, 
Standen Lander und Scheuern leer, 
D'runi danke Gott ein jeder Mann, 
Dass Scheuer und Land Gott segnen kann," 

or : 

" If God and the peasant did not exist 
Lands and barns would all be empty, 
So let everyone thank Heaven 
That God can bless both barn and land." 



Rural Life and Labour 75 

Superstition and ancient rural customs keep a 
powerful hold upon the peasantry everywhere, 
and many a quaint observance of venerable 
origin is still kept up, though its meaning has 
been forgotten. For example, the witches' 
dance on the Brocken, which popular credulity 
has always associated with Walpurgis Night 
(April 30-May i), has left a curious relic in 
many parts of Saxony, and the most drastic 
police measures have failed altogether to dis- 
courage it. On this night the young folk persist 
in discharging firearms wholesale, in carrying 
burning besoms and torches about the hills, and 
in kindling Walpurgis and St. John's fires, — 
the modern representation of the raid which 
was made upon the witches when they gathered 
of old for their mad capers. Belief in witchcraft 
is far from extinct ; and while a peasant will 
disavow the credulity of his fathers, he will not 
omit to hide a piece of elder wood in his stables 
and stalls, and to plant it before the doors, as 
a defence against occult evil influence. The 
custom which obtains in some parts of sending 
the cattle into the pasture for the first time on 
the I St of May bears unconscious witness to the 
older fear of witchcraft. 

The celebration of harvest takes a prominent 
place in the social amenities of the country. 
Formerly it was the great festive event of the 
year, both for peasant and labourer. One or 



76 German Life 

more days were entirely given over to merri- 
ment and good cheer, and the farmer and his 
man met on equal terms at the dance, the 
game, and the well-spread board, as at no other 
time in the year. Of late years some of the 
customs of harvest have fallen into disuse, 
partly owing to the less friendly relationships 
which exist between the rural classes, and partly 
because the labourer is becoming superior to the 
simple pleasures which were enough for his 
fathers, yet in the more unsophisticated parts of 
the country they still continue. In Wurtemberg 
these celebrations include ancient customs in 
which the maidservants of the farms alone take 
part. One is a race ; dressed in short frocks 
and white bodices, but with naked feet, they 
scour the countryside, and the winner is held in 
high honour amongst admiring swains. An- 
other is a pitcher-carrying competition, in which 
a large vessel, filled to the brim with water, 
must be borne on the head for a certain distance 
without assistance by the hands. In Alsace 
farmer and labourer change places for the day. 
The latter is absolved from service of every kind, 
and the farmer both waits on his men and does 
all the necessary farm work. The day is given 
over to feasting and sports, and ends with a 
long night of dancing. Dancing is, in fact, the 
most popular of country amusements, and is 
carried on to such an extent — as a rule in the 




2 <, 

< a 



Rural Life and Labour "j^ 

village inn — as to have become a source of 
grave anxiety to those who are concerned for 
village morality. 

The old marriage customs, too, are still popu- 
lar. The bridal race, which once was common 
to rural England, is observed in many parts of 
Germany, doubtless perpetuating the ancient 
rule which required that a maid should be car- 
ried off on horseback. In Prussia the custom 
was varied, in that the race followed the day 
of marriage. Husband and wife raced to a 
given place, after which the bridal-wreath was 
taken from the wife's head and a coiffure of the 
kind common to her locality was placed thereon 
instead,— in unchivalrous reminder that the time 
of poetry was over and the time of prose had 
begun. Throughout Germany the eve before 
marriage is devoted to festivities in which the 
relatives and the near friends of the nuptial pair 
take part, but the name of the festival, Polter- 
abenci, denotes its descent from a custom of a 
very different kind. Polter means noise (being 
really the equivalent of the colloquial English 
"row"), and the explanation of the term is 
curious but very human. On the day before 
a marriage it was usual for kind busybodies 
to canvass the virtues and failings of the bride 
and bridegroom. Did the virtues clearly pre- 
ponderate, they signified their good-will by visit- 
ing the nuptial house and by means of hideous 



78 German Life 

noises scaring away the evil spirits which were 
supposed to lurk there. The windows were 
carefully locked and the door alone left open, 
for by this lawful way only the uncanny guests 
were required to depart. From attic to cellar 
water was sprinkled in every corner of the 
house, all the walls were beaten with sticks, 
and ridiculous imprecations were used where- 
with to terrorise the unhappy ghosts. If the 
past careers of the bridal pair gave room for 
legitimate cavil, this found expression in bois- 
terous demonstrations before the houses of both, 
something after the manner of the " stang- 
riding " which is still common to the Yorkshire 
dales. In rural Germany the original associations 
of Polter-abend are still in part retained in all their 
noisiness, but in the towns the evening is devoted 
to social intercourse, in which music, theatricals, 
games, and innocent gossip take the chief place. 
On the land, where time is no consideration 
and festivities of the kind happen too seldom to 
be taken lightly, the wedding parties are often 
spread over several days, and everybody has a 
share in turn. The following food was actually 
consumed not long ago during the marriage 
festivities of a well-to-do farmer on the Weser : 
— one fat cow, seven pigs, seventeen calves, 
two hundred and twenty hens, two hundred 
loaves and cakes, three hundred and seventy 
gallon^ of beer, and a large quantity of spirit 



Rural Life and Labour 79 

and wine. Amongst the Black Forest peasantry 
exists still a peculiar plan (called Leibgeding or 
Libding) of transferring a holding from father 
to son. When an old peasant is no longer 
capable of heavy work, or wishes to make way 
for a son or daughter desiring to marry, he gives 
up his farm to his heir and successor in con- 
sideration of an agreement that he and his wife 
shall have a place in the house and food enough 
for the rest of their days. This arrangement is 
put on paper, and legally attested, for the Black 
Forest peasant is long-headed, and never believes 
what he cannot see. 

On the economic side, rural life in Germany 
presents to-day many difficult problems with 
whose solution the prosperity of agriculture is 
very closely bound up. There, as in England, 
the constant decrease of the rural population 
has created a dearth of labour, which of late 
years has threatened to make successful farming 
impossible. How far this displacement of 
population has gone may be judged from the 
fact that between the years 1871 and 1895 the 
rural population of the Empire, as officially so 
defined, had decreased by nearly a million, 
though the total population increased to the ex- 
tent often and a half millions during that period. 
In the northern parts of the Empire, holdings 
have as a result been amalgamated on a large 
scale, and the wages which farmers have -nowa- 



So German Life 

days to pay — ^though not so high as those ruling 
in the more prosperous parts of England — are a 
source of growing perplexity. 

At the best the financial position of the landed 
classes is no brilliant one. It is estimated that 
the large estates in Prussia are on an average 
mortgaged to the extent of seventy per cent, of 
their market value, though the percentage is 
far higher in the provinces of East Prussia and 
Pomerania. The peasant properties are less en- 
cumbered, though these, too, are mortgaged to 
the average amount of forty per cent. But dear 
labour, and a serious lack of that, with diminish- 
ing capital and keen foreign competition in corn, 
have created an agricultural crisis which promises 
to produce very disastrous results. 

The causes which have contributed to the 
migration of population to the towns are in part 
identical with those which have operated in 
other lands. Briefly, the rural labourer is dis- 
satisfied with the life, labour, and earnings which 
the country offers, and he both seeks and finds 
better conditions and better prospects in the large 
industrial centres. It has been found that mili- 
tary service has the effect of decreasing the 
amount of labour which would normally be 
available for agricultural pursuits. The country 
recruit performs his two years of service in 
town, and it happens not seldom that the attrac- 
tions of urban life acquire so strong a hold upon 



Rural Life and Labour 8i 

him that he is unwilling, at the expiration of his 
term of military training, to return to the quiet 
and monotony of rural life. 

On the land the labourer's lot is seldom an en- 
viable one, and in the more backward parts of 
the country it is excessively hard, and often in- 
tolerable. In the main, the modes of agricultural 
employment prevalent in North Germany may 
be classed under three systems. The freest and 
most modern is the hired-labour system of West- 
phalia, which approximates most closely to the 
English system. The system peculiar to Saxony 
is that of the peasant-labourer, who, besides 
working for a large farmer, cultivates land of 
his own. Finally, in the provinces east of the 
Elbe, where the labourers are largely Poles, the 
manorial system widely prevails, and here such 
economic freedom as is enjoyed is theoretical 
rather than real. 

The German agricultural labourer has hitherto 
been untouched by the spirit of combination 
which has been popularised among industrial 
labourers, and the result is not to his advantage. 
Complaints of overwork, low wages, and entire 
lack of leisure are common, and so far as these 
complaints are justified the farmers have only 
themselves to blame for the dearth of labour 
which they lament ; for not only are they un- 
willing to pay wages at all approximating those 
which their men might obtain in the adjacent 



82 German Life 

towns, but they have in many districts cut the 
ground beneath their own feet by importing cheap 
and inferior Polish labour, which has been re- 
garded by the native labourer as a notice to quit, 
which notice has been acted upon accordingly. 
At the best, the wages paid in the country are 
poor, for 2s. and 2S. 6d. a day is a high rate, and 
the average would be nearer is. 6d. for a man 
and 15. for his wife, when all available time is 
devoted to the work of the farm. Polish labour- 
ers can be had at any time and in any number at 
the rate of is. to is. 6d. per day, with potatoes 
to eat and sacking to sleep on thrown in, but 
experience proves that cheap labour of the kind 
is dear in the end. There are districts where 
farm labourers are kept in the field from earliest 
daylight until late at night in return for a meagre 
6d. per day with food. 

Then the relationship between the farmer and 
his hinds is also far from being as sympathetic as 
in earlier days, and the tendency, as in England, 
is more and more for the farmer to cut himself 
off from his dependants. The effect is seen in 
many ways. Work is harder, and there is less 
respite from its pressure than formerly. Holi- 
days would seem to be going out of fashion. It 
used to be a very customary thing for a small 
agricultural town to have at least its four mar- 
kets in the year, its church dedication day, holi- 
days of three days each at Christmas, Easter, and 



Rural Life and Labour Ss 

Whitsuntide, with two prayer and penance 
days, not to speak of casual days and holy days, 
— say three weeks in the year in all, — but nowa- 
days people are too serious to waste so much 
time, and the labourer does not like the change, 
which keeps him more closely at the wheel. 
This aspect of the question, however, does not 
merely apply to the smaller farmers. There is a 
general lament in these days that rural labour 
fails to receive the recognition and respect which 
it both desires and deserves. The vocabulary of 
the German manufacturer does not contain the 
English abomination "hands," a word now so 
thoroughly naturalised that factory operatives in 
the north of England use it when speaking of 
themselves ; yet the term Gesinde, in which the 
landed proprietor and gentleman farmer of Ger- 
many group their employes or ' ' people " {Leute), 
indicates an undesirable spirit of disparagement. 
There is too much truth in the recently published 
lament of a German rural pastor, that "the feel- 
ing that they are, because of their social condition, 
regarded and treated with contempt by those 
from whom they earn their daily bread weighs 
like an Alp upon the rural labouring population." 
" You should not fear me, you should love me," 
Frederick the Great is said to have told two Jews 
whom he was soundly thrashing. But flagella- 
tion, however well meant, is a form of benevo- 
lence whose success is at best doubtful. If the 



84 German Life 

German landed proprietors desire to win the 
genuine attachment of their labourers, they will 
have to banish all the thoughts of the old days of 
serfdom which linger in the minds of many of 
their number. 

Even when rural labourers are best treated 
there is a secret disposition on the part of the 
work-givers to regard them as in a sense morally 
bound to remain to the end of life in the manor 
or village where they were born, and not a few 
landowning deputies, who are returned to the 
Imperial and State Diets year after year, would 
willingly vote for a measure that would make 
that imaginary obligation a legal one. Such as- 
pirations are, of course, visionary, yet their very 
existence is an evil. So firmly convinced are 
the landed classes that the tillers of the soil abso- 
lutely exist for them, and that a man who is 
born an agricultural labourer should in duty re- 
main such and train his sons and daughters to 
follow in his footsteps, that the newspapers 
which represent agrarian interests are continually 
calling upon the Governments to convert the 
rural schools into institutions for the production 
of tractable peasants. "Let geography, draw- 
ing, and science go," said the most important of 
these journals recently, "and let the time thus 
saved be devoted to religious instruction, so that 
the children m^y be trained in obedience, indus- 
try, and piety, and thus make good labourers." 



Rural Life and Labour 85 

It is evident that men who hold such views have 
much to learn, and more to unlearn. In the 
remoter agricultural districts, where large manor- 
ial estates are the rule, something like the old 
feudal relationship does, indeed, prevail, so far 
as modern legislative restrictions have not 
abolished it. Here is a sample of the sort of 
agreement which many a patriarchal landowner 
makes with a labourer and his family, for he 
engages them together, — man, wife, and child- 
ren, so far as the latter are able to work : 

"The lord of the manor offers his labourer a 
dwelling, with sixty square roods of garden- 
ground and fifty square roods of potato-ground, 
for ^3 155. a year, paid weekly by deductions 
from wages of is. 6d. per week, and will pay 
his railway fare, provided that he and the mem- 
bers of his family remain in service for at least 
two years. He may not, however, keep either 
cow or goat ; but, on the other hand, the lord 
of the manor will sell him new milk at \d. per 
litre (a pint and three-quarters), and skimmed 
milk at ^d. He may, however, keep a pig and a 
few hens, but no dogs, and bed straw and litter in 
reasonable quantity will be provided free. The 
labourer must pay for his own food of all kinds, 
also for doctor and apothecary, but the services 
of a midwife will be provided free. Fuel will 
be conveyed for him within a radius of five miles 
at the rate of 3s. per load. Seed potatoes will 



86 German Life 

also be supplied at the rate of 6d. per square 
rood. The labourer must make all repairs to 
the house of which he is capable, materials be- 
ing supplied to him for the purpose. The lord 
of the manor, or his agent, reserves the right 
to visit and inspect the labourer's dwelling at all 
times. 

" The labourer will bind himself, with the rest 
of the members of his family who live on the 
estate, to work only for the lord of the manor. 
For this work he will receive payment as follows : 
winter half year, is. 6d. per day; summer half 
year, \s. gd. per day, with 6d. a day extra dur- 
ing six weeks of harvest. Young men (his sons) 
over twenty years of age will receive ()d. per day 
in winter and is. in summer, but no addition 
during harvest." 

Under such a contract, the money income of 
husband and wife, even assuming work and 
wages to be unintermittent throughout the whole 
year, could hardly be called brilliant for the be- 
ginning of the twentieth century. Even sup- 
posing that all Sundays and holidays were paid 
for, the man would only earn ^^o 12s. and his 
wife ;^I5 1 8s., together £46 los. 

But the system of payment in kind is gradually 
breaking down. Even the Polish labourers, who 
are at the lowest stage of social development, 
clamour more and more for money wages, and 
will accept payment — provided only it be in coin 



Rural Life and Labour ^7 

— so low as to be incapable of supporting Ger- 
man labourers in a decent standard of life. In 
the Polish parts of Prussia the state of things pre- 
vailing leaves much to be desired. There Polish 
men and woman are engaged indiscriminately 
on the work of the large farms, and the general 
conditions as to employment and discipline are 
more suggestive of slave plantations than of a 
modern free labour relationship. Rigorous em- 
ployers do no{ hesitate to rule literally with the 
rod and whip, and an utterly brutal and brutalis- 
ing regime is by no means uncommon. A lead- 
ing Berlin newspaper recorded this incident 
several years ago : 

" Upon a manorial estate in West Prussia 
some forty Polish women are employed. These 
people could no longer bear their terrible ill- 
usage, for they were treated like cattle, and they 
resolved to seek release in flight, which they did 
by taking the night train to Berlin. No sooner, 
however, was their flight discovered on the es- 
tate than word of it was sent to the police there, 
with the result that two police waggons were in 
waiting for the party at the station on their 
arrival, and in these they were placed and con- 
veyed to prison. The scene was heart-breaking 
as they were arrested, for the women did not 
understand a word of German, and no interpreter 
was present to help them. They showed the 
results of ill-usage on their bodies, which were 



88 German Life 

bruised black and blue by reason of the heavy 
blows administered to them with sticks while at 
work." 

The incident admits of no doubt. I have my- 
self heard from friends who have lived in the 
Polish districts similar stories of the drastic dis- 
cipline which prevails on some of the large es- 
tates there. On the other hand, the type of 
Pole who is employed in farm labour is extremely 
low. Drunkenness, theft, idleness, and the 
most degrading forms of immorality are lament- 
ably common, and the average labourer will 
only work when he is compelled. Comparisons 
made in certain parts of the eastern provinces 
of Prussia, where German, Polish, and Russian 
labourers work together, have proved the ratio 
of capability and of wages to be about 12 : 6 : 3. 
How far these unhappy people, members of a 
race which has known better days, and yet in- 
dulges high ambitions, are the victims of their 
conditions — have, in fact, been made what they 
are by circumstances — is a question with which 
I am not competent to deal. 

It is the Pole who comes to the front again 
in connexion with a labour movement which is 
known as Sachsengdngerei, — literally, "going 
to Saxony," — a vast annual migration of Polish 
labourers which takes place in harvest time. 
The institution has of late years developed into 
a "social problem," owing to the serious 



Rural Life and Labour 89 

displacement of native labour and the hunger- 
wages the supplanters are contented to receive. 
The large landowners like the arrangement well 
enough, though it is not without objectionable 
features, for the Polish "Saxony-goers" (they 
are of both sexes) lead the most miserable of 
existences. Their wages are of the smallest, 
their work heavy and exhausting, while of their 
scanty earnings the employment agents are not 
slow to claim an extortionate share. These 
wretched people are housed or herded in mean 
quarters, — sheds, barns, wooden structures of 
any handy kind, — and they are regarded as mere 
machines, out of which as much work as pos- 
sible has to be got during the shortest time 
for the least possible pay. 

All sorts of measures have been proposed of 
late years for checking the migration of popula- 
tion to the towns. There is a large parliament- 
ary party which would require any rural resident 
wishful to leave his native place to furnish proof 
that he is able to set up a household for him- 
self and family in his contemplated place of 
settlement, with the proviso that he should be 
liable to be sent back to his old home directly 
he ceased to be an independent citizen. But 
Germany, with characteristic common-sense, is 
attempting to deal with this problem by prac- 
tical methods, instead of talking about impossi- 
ble ones until irreparable mischief has been done. 



90 German Life 

Such are the efforts which are being made in 
connexion with the " Home Colonisation " 
{Innere Colonisation) movement. Legislative 
provision now exists in Prussia whereby small 
holdings, suitable for labourers, can be acquired 
by the aid of State loans advanced on reasonable 
terms, both as to interest and repayment of 
principal ; and already a good work has been 
done in this way. 

Much is also being done to ameliorate the 
conditions of rural life by the provision of 
better dwellings for the labouring class, — a 
reform which has for long years been overdue. 
A large number of building societies, established 
on either a mutual or a benevolent basis, advance 
money for this purpose, and build houses, and 
either let or sell them, according to the tenant's 
desire. This movement has also been greatly 
facilitated by the permission which has been 
given to employ, in its aid, a certain part of 
the vast invested funds of the State Industrial 
Insurance Corporations. These funds now 
amount to some ;^4o,ooo,ooo, and are yearly 
increasing ; how to employ them advantage- 
ously had long been a perplexing problem ; and 
this outlet for investment has proved not less 
beneficial to the insurance authorities themselves 
than to the object assisted. Furthermore, care 
is being taken more than ever to bring the 
aid of technical instruction to bear upon rural 



Rural Life and Labour 91 

industry, and the value of the school-garden, as 
a means of preparing rural children for an agri- 
cultural life, has for years been recognised. The 
press of population from country to town will 
not be altogether stayed, but the many and 
various efforts which are being made to counter- 
act it may at least prevent the evil from getting 
entirely out of hand. Such a result will be to 
the untold advantage of the whole country, 
for the agrarian population not only constitutes 
the nation's backbone physically, but it is also 
a bulwark of social order ; and, in the present 
condition of Germany, the presence of this 
great reserve of moral strength and stability is 
a national blessing. 




CHAPTER V 

MILITARY SERVICE 

IN Germany the army is the nation in a literal 
sense. According to the letter of the law, 
every male subject is liable to be called on to 
serve when he has completed his seventeenth 
year, and the liability continues to the end of his 
forty-fifth yearo The term of service in the 
standing army is seven years, and it usually be- 
gins with the twenty-first year. Two years 
(instead of three, as formerly) are now passed 
with the colours, after which the time-expired 
soldier passes by successive stages into the first 
reserve, the Landwehr, and finally into the Land- 
sturm. This last is the army of emergency, 
comprising all male citizens between the ages of 
seventeen and forty-five who do not belong to 
the army or navy, and it is only intended to be 
called up in the event of the regular forces prov- 
ing insufficient for home defence. Though the 
obligation to serve his country under arms ap- 
plies to every able-bodied German save the 
92 
\ 

i' 

i 



Military Service 93 

members of reigning and mediatised houses — 
who, nevertheless, are seldom slow to act upon 
the principle of noblesse oblige — the law is ap- 
plied with all possible leniency. Physical weak- 
ness, even of a slight character, exempts, of 
necessity ; but the sole bread-winners of fami- 
lies, theological students, and even the sons of 
farmers, tradespeople, and others who cannot 
easily be spared from home, are also excused. 
Further latitude is allowed by the enrolment of 
what are known as " one-year volunteers," who 
enjoy a curtailed service in consideration of their 
satisfying certain high educational requirements, 
and undertaking to clothe, maintain, and house 
themselves during their year with the colours 
without cost to the State. 

The oppressive burden which is imposed up,qn 
Germany by its huge military system would ap- 
pear to possess perennial interest for English 
moralists of a certain class. The curious thing 
is that a good deal more is said and written, 
preached and pamphleteered, on the subject in 
England than in the country concerned, — one 
illustration among many of her national habit of 
tendering advice on other people's affairs with- 
out invitation, need, or knowledge. The fact is 
that the military and naval budgets of the German 
Empire fall far below those of England. The 
former (taking the highest published estimate) 
reached a total of ;i^39, 624,964 for the year 



94 German Life 

1898-99, made up of ;^33, 43 1,1 28 for the army, 
and ;^6, 193,836 for the navy. The English de- 
fensive budgets amounted for the same financial 
year to £22,}^(),^c)^ for the army, and £2^,- 
']^^,822 for the navy, a total of ^47,093,421, or 
;^7,478,464 more than the total for the Ger- 
man Empire with nearly fifteen millions more 
population. 

It may be said that, although the direct cost to 
the national treasury of the army and navy is far 
greater per head in England than in Germany, 
the difference is more than made up by the fact 
that Germany maintains a standing army at least 
tw^ice larger than the English army and navy 
together, insomuch as over half a million men 
are continuously withdrawn from private life and 
employments, and kept in barracks. That is 
quite true ; and it is here, of course, that the 
economic disadvantage of Germany's system of 
universal service shows itself. What the loss 
thus caused means can only be conjectured, 
yet, though real enough, it is impossible that it 
can be so obstructive to industrial progress and 
so destructive to national wealth as it is generally 
represented. If the purely commercial argu- 
ment against universal military service held 
water, there would not be so much justification 
for the complaint, nowadays so common, of 
German competition li " e home and world 
markets. Besides, if th.^ argument were con- 



Military Service 95 

elusive, and the unmixed economic curse it 
is supposed to be out of Germany, the last 
thing that England ought to desire is that 
Germany should reduce its armaments, and 
leave its young men to pursue their natural 
course undisturbed in the factories and on the 
land. 

The fact is that the system of universal service 
has grown into the very life of the nation. That 
it does not impede industry to the extent that 
might be supposed is due to its priority to the 
economic development of the country as we 
know it. Hence, industry has merely had to 
accommodate itself to a condition of things 
which existed long before it laid claim to the 
energies of the people. Were a country like 
England to go over to universal service, its social 
and industrial life would have to be remodelled 
in every direction, and the consequences would 
be disturbing beyond estimation. Germany has 
been spared any revolution of the kind, because 
it imposed upon itself this yoke at a time when 
it entailed no great hardship, and habit and time 
have now entirely accustomed the bearers to 
the burden. Moreover, compensating circum- 
stances of very real value exist. The thousands 
of young Germans who are every year taken 
from industry and trade are sent back better, 
more efficient, more intelligent citizens in every 
way than they were before. Moreover, they 



96 German Life 

are not thrown indiscriminately upon the mar- 
ket, but to a large extent go back to their old 
positions. In the case of non-commissioned 
officers, the State itself undertakes to provide 
employment on the completion of twelve years 
of honourable service, and the postal, railway, 
police, customs, and inland-revenue departments 
furnish all the posts that are necessary. The 
personal advantages, both physical and moral, 
of military service are certainly great. On this 
subject 1 cannot do better than repeat what I 
wrote some years ago. In the army a young 
man is put to a rigorous test of endurance, and 
if he passes through it successfully, his physique 
is established for life. The comment is often 
made that the strong are strengthened and the 
weak weakened by this ordeal. But this is 
an unfair way of putting the matter. It is true 
that the robust man as a rule receives only bene- 
fit ; but it far oftener happens that weak con- 
stitutions are built up than pulled down at the 
end of the one or two years' service. For the 
physically incapable are not taken into the army 
at all, and so abundant is the supply of recruits 
yearly that the authorities can afford to interpret 
the conditions of exemption liberally. This 
argument of physical benefit would, of course, 
be far less applicable to a country like England, 
whose youths make up for the absence of 
military training by manly outdoor exercises 



Military Service 97 

unknown on the Continent, but in Germany it is 
of untold value. 

The effect upon rural labourers of their two 
years in the army is marvellous. Look on the 
two pictures. It is recruiting time, and every 
day brings fresh train-loads of countrymen to 
town. In long file they walk from the station 
to the barracks. And how they walk ! As 
only the field labourer can, — bowed and bent, 
with heavy, awkward, slouching gait, the very 
picture of ungracefulness. The accompanying 
subaltern does not look over-proud of his 
charges, but he is comforting himself with the 
thought that he will soon "change all that." 
They are neatly dressed, though, these village 
lads, for this is a notable day that brings them to 
the great city, with its unknown life. Some dan- 
gle ribbons from their buttonholes, some wear 
flowers fresh from the meadow, some have 
decked their hats with oak leaves, just to show 
that they are not ashamed of their country 
origin. Their baggage is small : a red pocket- 
handkerchief, slung over the shoulder, carries 
all that a man needs to bring with him, for his 
future dress, from helmet to socks and shoes, 
is ready for him in the barracks. For the most 
part they are a happy lot, though here and there 
one may see a face that says as plainly as words 
could do that the pangs of homesickness are 
already gnawing at the heart. Yet it is their 



98 German Life 

undisciplined rawness that most strikes the 
townsman, accustomed as he is every day to 
watch the orderly march past of garrison troops. 
Six months later the same peasants pass along 
the same streets, now wearing the Emperor's 
uniform. But how different the carriage ! Now 
they march ; before they waddled. To the clear 
note of the trumpet and the brisk beat of the 
drum, the regiment treads with firm, united, 
and graceful step. Line after line passes, as 
straight in its progress as though a steel rod ran 
through it. It is veritable music of movement, 
and one would not believe, unless he knew it, 
that scattered amongst this band of troops are 
the rude, uncultured, unfashioned countrymen 
who not long ago shambled along in supreme 
disorder. 

The moral aspect of military service is two- 
sided, though the preponderant effect is unques- 
tionably good. The discipline of the barracks 
and the drill-ground is undergone in the critical 
time in a young man's life when he decides, 
by habits no less than deliberate option, whether 
his future is to be characterised by self-control, 
by regard for order and obedience, and by a 
lawful instead of a lawless liberty. In passing 
through this crisis he is greatly helped by tem- 
porary life in the army. Its restraint, good in 
itself, is doubly valuable to him. He may chafe 
under it, but the very chafing is part of a 



Military Service 99 

wholesome, stimulating discipline, whose effects 
extend beyond the period of his service. Many 
a youth is saved from ruin — made a man — 
by his term of military experience. While the 
Emperor's uniform is upon him, he must simply 
obey, be he count or clown, heir to opulence- or 
heir to poverty, — for both serve side by side. Let 
his character be as stubborn and uncontrolled as 
it may when he enters the ranks, he nevertheless 
finds out before an hour has gone that in the 
barracks only one will can exist. It may be the 
will of colonel, or captain, or lieutenant, or even 
of an uneducated, loud-mouthed sergeant, but 
it can never be his. The unaccustomed restraint 
is bound to be salutary. It teaches self-control, 
submission, patience ; while those who need the 
lesson learn also how to be orderly and scrupul- 
ously cleanly. It may be said that discipline is 
a good thing in its way, but we can have too 
much of it, and that an excess militates against 
the formation of a free, independent, and sturdy 
character. This objection is valid in the abstract, 
but the danger of modern times, when rebellion 
against authority is observable in so many direc- 
tions, is less the restriction of liberty than the 
extension of licence, and the introduction of 
military subordination would, to-day, be per- 
haps most salutary in quarters where it is least 
likely to become welcome. 
Moreover, the common assertion — common, 

LofC. 



loo German Life 

that is, out of Germany — that military service is 
unpopular, is simple nonsense. The institution 
which, next to the throne, is most popular in 
Germany, is the army. Its popularity runs 
through all classes of the population, and so 
does the popularity of what is wrongly called in 
England the "conscription." If this "conscrip- 
tion " meant what the word implies, — the enrol- 
ment, by lot or otherwise, of only a part of the 
able-bodied young men of the nation, — military 
service would probably be heartily detested. 
But the fact of the obligation to serve being 
universal, without distinction of rank or class, 
makes that an honour which would otherwise 
be felt a harsh duty. The recruit knows that he 
only does what every one of his countrymen, if 
eligible, either has done, is doing, or will do; 
and this consciousness of equality reconciles him 
to every sacrifice which is laid upon him. It 
would be idle to deny that many persons regard 
the service as onerous, for the long roll of those 
who courageously flee their country rather than 
do their duty to it would falsify such a denial. 
It may also be conceded that many who may not 
seek to escape from this obligation to the State 
discharge it grudgingly and of necessity. But 
this may safely be said, — that while military 
service entails considerable hardship and a certain 
disappointment of plans and prospects, the num- 
ber of those one-year or even two-year recruits 



Military Service loi 

who carry into life any grudge against the army, 
or who regard their association with it other 
than with feelings of pride and gratification, is 
exceedingly small. Even working-men, upon 
whom military service might seem to press most 
heavily, are as warmly attached to the army as 
are the sons of officers themselves. Now and 
then a growling deserter kicks at the pricks 
because his hiding-place has been found out, 
and he is compelled to do the duty which he 
had shirked, and, straightway, airs his dissatis- 
faction in unpatriotic contributions to foreign 
publications. But testimony from such sources 
may safely be rejected. The man who will at- 
tack his country and his country's institutions 
for the mere amusement of the outside world is 
not likely to be the most credible, as he is cert- 
ainly not the most creditable, of witnesses. 

Yet, when these legitimate advantages have 
been claimed for the military training which 
German youth undergoes, and when the un- 
doubted popularity of the service is admitted, it 
would be absurd to pretend that Germany main- 
tains its vast army from the mere love of num- 
bers, or is in a peculiar way imbued with the 
martial spirit. It is easy for a country like Eng- 
land, secure against attack by its insular position 
and its command of the sea, to deplore the waste 
of human energy and material treasure which is 
represented when an entire nation is under arms, 



I02 German Life 

but the German regards these superior reflec- 
tions as particularly ungracious, and replies that 
England, instead of unkindly criticising, should 
be grateful for her own privileged position. 
Moreover, how often do the critics of universal 
service take account of the fact that Germany, 
with all its soldiers, is in reality less a military 
country than England is a naval country ! To 
reduce the matter to plain figures, while Ger- 
many's standing army, in numbers, is roughly 
as two to one when compared with that of Eng- 
land, England's navy is as five to one when 
compared with the German navy as it stands in 
the present year (say, a hundred and ten thou- 
sand men and a hundred and sixty-five battle- 
ships and armoured cruisers for England, and 
twenty-three thousand men and twenty-seven 
battleships and armoured cruisers for Germany). 
The simple explanation is that England and 
Germany have both armed themselves where 
they are most vulnerable, — in the one case on sea, 
in the other on land. With powerful States both 
to east and west of it, jealous of its prestige, 
hating it, if the truth were known, with a perfect 
hatred, each ready to pounce on it, — if only the 
other would first knock it down, — Germany 
must be perpetually en vedette. It dare not risk 
a less degree of security than that of its neigh- 
bours. As they arm themselves, so must the 
Empire arm itself; the larger their battalions 



Military Service 103 

become, the larger must be its. It is a lamentable 
relationship to exist between civilised States, 
only less lamentable than war itself. But here 
is the position, and neither demonstration of its 
economic evil nor moralising of the most impas- 
sioned order will at present ameliorate matters. 
The question which Germany has to face is not 
one of economics or ethics, but of its very life 
as a nation, its independence as a State. It 
knows that only by being prepared for war can 
it be sure of peace, and it bears the cost of its 
armaments willingly. After all, an army ex- 
penditure of thirty-three millions a year is econ- 
omy itself when compared with the permanent 
result of an unfavourable war. 

To-day the genius and proficiency of the 
German imperial army represents the accumu- 
lated results of a century's military training, un- 
intermittent, whether the years have been years 
of war or of peace. Yet it is Prussia and the 
brilliant commanders and tacticians whom it has 
given to the army that have brought about this 
condition of comparative perfection. "Prussia 
contributes more soldiers than all the other 
States combined; and not only has it during the 
last hundred years been disciplined in a severer 
school of war than any other European country, 
but its citizens have for ninety of these years 
lived under the obligation of universal military 
service." It was the Frenchman Talleyrand who 



I04 German Life 

said On pent tout fair e avec les hayonettes excepte 
s'y asseoir. But it was contemporary generals 
and statesmen of Prussia who recognised that 
even bayonets only became effective weapons 
when used with skill. "The Prussian army is 
demoralised by peace," said Gneisenau; "if you 
want to be a military State, you must engage in 
war, for war is an art, and every art needs prac- 
tice." Thus came about the edict, now almost 
a hundred years old, which required every capa- 
ble son of Prussia to study and learn the use of 
arms. With such a long military tradition, the 
wonder is that there is not more of the fighting 
spirit in the Prussians. The great secret of the 
efficiency and the incomparable discipline of the 
German army is the cultivation of a deep sense 
of direct personal responsibility in all its officers, 
from the highest to the lowest. Each in his own 
province exercises an authority which is virtually 
unlimited. For though authority travels down- 
ward from commander-in-chief, through all the 
grades of rank, to captain, and from him farther 
downward to under-officers of various degree, 
each recipient of orders knows that no one can 
come between him and his responsibility. More- 
over, wide freedom of action is allowed to each 
officer as to the methods by which the desired 
results are to be obtained. " Every commander, 
from the captain upwards, is responsible for the 
training of his men, according to regulation, and 



Military Service 105 

must, therefore, be as little restricted as possible 
in the choice of means." So run the drill regula- 
tions ; though the necessary rider is added, 
"The immediate superiors are bound to inter- 
fere, in case either of mistakes or want of pro- 
gress." Thus the principle adopted is that of 
unity in things essential, but liberty in all others, 
and the principle has been found to work admir- 
ably. The unfriendly critic may point to the 
abuse of power which is occasionally brought 
home to the non-commissioned officers. Many 
of these men undoubtedly inflict upon the pri- 
vates under their charge hardship, and even 
cruelty, such as would, if their conduct came to 
light, entail upon them severe punishment and 
dismissal from an army of whose reputation they 
are not worthy. It is, of course, the slow and 
obtuse recruits who mostly suffer in these cases, 
— the raw countryman, who has never before 
learned the right use of his limbs ; the obstinate 
labours, to whom agility is so desperately hard 
of attainment. Yet, however dull and backward 
his men may be, the non-commissioned officer 
is, within the limits laid down by his superiors, 
responsible for their progress. They must be 
made to learn the drill, to acquire the requisite 
celerity, however unnatural it may be to them, 
and to attain the full efficiency of the company 
to which they belong. And so the poor rustic, 
who can plough a straight furrow though he 



io6 German Life 

cannot for his life dress up to the line, who can 
handle a fork or swing a flail with ease and 
grace though he cannot shoulder his rifle briskly, 
finds the first few months of barrack-life hard 
and galling. Arbitrary punishments are inflicted 
by irascible under-ofFicers, who are often men 
without refinement, or even humane instincts, 
and who, finding themselves dressed in brief 
authority, magnify and abuse their power. But 
such abuse is the exception, and when discovered 
it is sternly repressed. The general treatment 
of the rank and file is considerate and kindly. 
The exercises may at times be severe, and the 
manoeuvres are always intensely fatiguing. Yet 
the attitude of the commissioned officer towards 
his men is everything that could be desired, 
and, in return, the loyalty of the common soldier 
to his superior is complete, and his obedience, 
patience, and endurance worthy of the best 
military traditions." 

It is unfortunate that the same cordial relation- 
ship does not invariably exist between the offi- 
cer and the civil public. Friction is of frequent 
occurrence, and not seldom the wrong is demon- 
strably on the military side. The officers, in 
fact, constitute an exclusive caste, and the gen- 
eral feeling entertained towards civilians, save 
those of State official rank, is one of depreciation 
and even worse. It is an anomalous attitude to 
hold, seeing that the civilians, after all, keep the 



Military Service 107 

military machine going, and that most of them 
have at one time or another taken their place in 
the army. There is also a decided tendency for 
officers to take undue advantage of the law 
which makes them amenable to military courts 
instead of the civil tribunals of the land. Offi- 
cers are proverbially jealous of the dignity of 
their calling, but this natural and proper feeling 
finds expression at times in unfortunate ways, 
thanks largely to the fact that an officer's judges 
are his peers. It is not long since wide-spread 
indignation was caused throughout South Ger- 
many by a painful incident which strikingly 
illustrated this point. In a cafe at Carlsruhe 
a lieutenant belonging to the local garrison 
was seated, and in passing by his chair an art- 
isan happened awkwardly to knock against it. 
The officer demanded an apology, and as the 
artisan foolishly declined to give it, he drew 
his sword and attempted to run the man through 
the body. Spectators of the scene intervened, 
and the artisan made his way into another 
room ; but the officer's blood, instead of cool- 
ing, became hotter as he further reflected upon 
the insult he had received, and, following the 
man, and finding him alone, and his exit pre- 
vented by a locked door, he deliberately stabbed 
him through the back with fatal results. It 
must also be added that the officer's conduct re- 
ceived implicit condonation from the Government 



io8 German Life 

when brought to debate a short time later in the 
Reichstag. 

If the officers, for their part, have a grievance 
more justifiable than service grievances generally 
are, it is that w^hen the time comes for taking 
their discharge in the ordinary course, the State 
does not treat them over-liberally. The com- 
plaint is not unheard of elsewhere ; but in Ger- 
many, where the embryo officer is not always 
born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, 
and where officers' pay has never been accused 
of exorbitancy by the most rigidly economical 
critic of army estimates, it has a serious basis 
of fact. The officer claims that the Govern- 
ment and country in whose service he spends 
the best years of his life — often without receiv- 
ing remuneration sufficient to meet the normal 
professional calls upon a man in his position — 
should at least guarantee him, on retirement, oc- 
cupation in some public sphere compatible with 
his rank and capacities, or, failing that, an ade- 
quate pension allowance. At present the'former 
alternative is held out in but a small minority of 
cases, and as the average pension claimable is 
inadequate to the maintenance of a tolerable ap- 
pearance, service in some private capacity is re- 
sorted to where possible, though here again it is 
only the favoured few who succeed in obtaining 
suitable appointments. Sooner or later the 
question will have to be seriously faced by the 



Military Service 109 

Imperial Government. It will mean higher army 
expenditure, but it is inevitable, for the present 
scale of officers' pay and pensions does not take 
account of the severe claims and obligations of 
modern life. 

What especially distinguishes the German 
army from every other modern army is the mas- 
terly way in which all the principal functions of 
organisation and administration are centralised in 
a body of chosen men, whose one object is to 
do the army's thinking. This body is the Gen- 
eral Staff ; for there is no Imperial Ministry of 
War. After the Emperor, the supreme central 
authority is the Committee of the Federal Coun- 
cil for the Army and Fortresses, whose president 
is the Prussian War Minister, while the Prussian 
Ministry of War acts as its executive organ, and 
conducts all necessary business with the separate 
War Ministries of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, and 
Saxony. But the true "brain of the army" is 
the General Staff. It is composed of the clever- 
est officers in the entire army, who undergo 
training of a special character in the Berlin War 
Academy. The members of the Staff are not, 
however, permanent, but are constantly being 
drawn from, and returned to, the troops. The 
duties of this council are multifarious. It is 
primarily responsible for the well-being of the 
service, both in peace and war. It controls 
military movements, mobilises, organises, and 



no German Life 

governs ; makes plans of war and fights battles on 
paper. It not only administers the affairs of the 
home army, but follows military activities abroad, 
and knows as much about the defensive position 
and resources of some nations as they know 
themselves, and often a good deal more. In a 
word, the General Staff is the master-mind that 
directs the countless movements of a vast army, 
whose millions of members, active and in re- 
serve, are scattered over an area of two hundred 
and eleven thousand square miles. Other coun- 
tries have their War Departments, but in no 
State are the deliberative and administrative de- 
partments of the military system so thoroughly 
organised as in Germany, because in no other 
State is militarism so scientifically and so seri- 
ously studied. 

A question very closely affecting the life of 
the army, yet having interest for wider circles 
of society, is the continued popularity of the 
duel. No doubt the practice is on the decline, 
alike in the army, amongst students, and, more 
still, in private life, though official statistics on 
the subject do not give a faithful idea of the 
extent to which it is even yet resorted to, often 
on the flimsiest of pretexts. Essentially the 
duel is, of course, an institution of the army, 
whose unwritten laws recognise both its per- 
missibility and necessity, and prescribe precisely 
when and how it shall be resorted to. 



Military Service in 

There is no doubt that the root of this evil is 
the arbitrary conduct of the military courts of 
honour — courts of oificers, which, created by 
royal warrant, are made, by the etiquette of the 
army, absolutely binding upon those to whom 
their judgments refer, whether such judg- 
ments are sought or not.. These courts take it 
upon themselves to say when challenges issued 
to officers must be accepted ; and naturally they 
show no disposition to deviate from the tradi- 
tions of the mess-room, which regard the duel 
as the stoutest part of honour's armour. The 
officer who is bidden to respond to a challenge 
must do so, whether he like or not, on pain of 
taboo by all his colleagues, which is tantamount 
to dismissal from the army. 

Not long ago, an officer who had declined a 
duel, and had, instead, resorted to law, was 
expelled from the officers' corps to which he 
belonged ; with the result that he changed his 
mind and fought a duel, for which, happily for 
him, his antagonist paid the penalty. 

Even so humane a man as the Emperor Will- 
iam I. declared, late in his reign, " I will no 
more tolerate in my army an officer who is 
capable of wantonly wounding the honour of 
a comrade than one who does not know how 
to vindicate his own honour." The attitude 
was contradictory, for it is exactly wanton in- 
sult — or insult which is regarded as such — 



112 German Life 

which gives rise to duels, and the officers who 
are at fault nevertheless remain in the army so 
long as they are willing to give sanguinary satis- 
faction, should that be required. 

The present Emperor's most explicit and 
most deliberate utterance on the subject is con- 
tained in the preamble to a Cabinet Order, 
drawn up at the end of the year 1896, for the 
better regulation of military courts of honour. 
" It is my will," said the Emperor, "that duels 
among my officers should be more effectively 
prevented than hitherto. Their occasion is often 
of a trifling character, such as private differences 
and insults where friendly compromise is attain- 
able without prejudice to professional honour. 
An officer must recognise that it is wrong to 
injure the honour of another. If, however, he 
has erred through hastiness or excitement, the 
chivalrous course to pursue is not to persist in 
his error, but to be ready to agree to a friendly 
compromise. It is equally the duty of one who 
has been offended or insulted to accept the offer 
of reconciliation, so far as professional honour 
and propriety permit. It is therefore my will 
that the Council of Honour shall henceforth, as 
a matter of principle, co-operate in the settle- 
ment of affairs of honour. The Council must 
undertake this duty with the conscientious en- 
deavour to bring about an amicable settlement." 

The Cabinet Order then issued for the army's 



Military Service 113 

guidance decreed that when a dispute or insult 
between officers is incapable of pacific settle- 
ment "in conformity with the requirements of 
professional honour " — that is, in accordance 
with the standard of honour and the reparation 
due to wounded dignity which military etiquette 
lays down — the parties concerned must, with- 
out resorting to arms, communicate at once 
with the Council of Honour which applies to 
them, and this body, after learning the facts of 
the case, may either (i) postpone a settlement 
of the difference ; (2) declare that no settle- 
ment is possible, and refer the matter to a Court 
of Honour ; or (3) declare that there is no quest- 
ion of honour at issue, and discharge the case ; 
but all decisions of a Council of Honour are 
subject to the veto of certain superior officers. 
Where either of the parties is dissatisfied with 
the finding of a Council of Honour, appeal is 
also allowed through such officers to the Em- 
peror personally, as head of the army. The 
Councils of Honour have similarly to adjudicate 
in cases of dispute between officers and private 
persons. Nominally, and, no doubt, with in- 
tention, the Order discourages duelling in the 
army, though it by no means forbids it ; and, 
in spite of the heavier obligations imposed upon 
the judges, there is yet little to prevent choleric 
officers from crossing swords, if they are seri- 
ously disposed. Much, of course, depends upon 



114 German Life 

the constitution of the Councils of Honour ; they 
possess, theoretically, the power to prevent a 
duel wherever they wish to employ it ; but as 
these bodies are composed of the same sus- 
ceptible and inflammable material out of which 
the duellists themselves are made, it is difficult 
to ensure that entire objectivity of consideration 
which is desirable, while it is hardly possible to 
conceive of an affair of honour ever coming for 
decision before men actually prejudiced against 
this obsolete and barbarous mode of settling 
disputes. Unfortunately, too, the whole theory 
of the permissibility of duelling is based upon 
the unpromising doctrine that honour amongst 
officers is something different from honour 
amongst civilians, and that atonement which 
would be held to be ample in the latter's case 
when wrong has been done, should not of 
necessity satisfy the former. 

How different the German officer's views of 
this question are from those generally prevalent 
in modern society may be illustrated by an article 
which was contributed by an officer to the prin- 
cipal service journal of Germany, when the last 
public outcry against the practice occurred. 
After proving to his complete satisfaction that 
Christian doctrine is not opposed to the duel, 
though granting it to be inconsistent with the 
law of the land, the writer went on to say : 
"How we, as officers, have to act is prescribed 



Military Service 115 

for us by orders, instructions, and the unwaver- 
ing customs and traditions of our class. Those 
are our laws, those are our authorities. If thereby 
we come into conflict with the imperial laws, 
we are ready to take the consequences. Let him 
who, after sincere self-examination, free from 
feeling of hatred and anger, determines to fight, 
do so in the conviction that he thereby trans- 
gresses neither the commandments of God nor 
the ordinances of Courts of Honour nor domi- 
nant customs. As on the field of battle, may 
he enter upon the conflict thrust upon him 
by circumstances with the firm belief that, 
' Whether we live, we live unto the Lord ; and 
whether we die, we die unto the Lord.* " Such 
candid advocacy of the duel and such thorough- 
going conviction of its propriety are, to say the 
least, novel and refreshing, though they offer 
little hope that the practice will soon fall into 
desuetude. 

It should be stated, however, that the Bavarian 
Government, unlike the Prussian, has invariably 
looked upon duelling with a less lenient eye. 
Not only do the Bavarian military regulations 
discourage duelling, and forbid any Court of 
Honour to exercise coercion upon an officer who 
may be unwishful to place his life in peril in any 
such absurd way, but occasions have occurred 
in which the Bavarian Prince Regent has himself 
intervened and openly taken the side of officers 



ii6 German Life 

who, for conscientious reasons, have refused to 
respond to a challenge. Not only so, but there 
is a vast preponderance of public opinion through- 
out Germany hostile to the duel ; and it is signifi- 
cant that, in a country not given to parliamentary 
petitioning, no fewer than seven thousand peti- 
tions, most of them signed by several thousand 
persons, were addressed to the Government on 
the occasion of the last duel scandal, calling for 
prompt repressive measures. The last time the 
question provided a full-dress debate in the 
Reichstag, as it does periodically, the House was 
pretty equally divided. Against the practice 
spoke energetically the Clericals, the Radicals, 
and the Social Democrats ; the first on religious 
grounds, the last two on the peculiar ground that 
duelling was a privilege of the "upper classes," 
since working-men were debarred frorh resorting 
to the less dangerous arbitrament of fisticuffs, 
save on peril of police measures. On the other 
hand, the two Conservative parties — which give 
to the army the majority of its officers — approved 
of the duel as a sort of necessity of civilisation 
which German society would abandon only with 
hazard to personal honour and chivalry. 

How unequally the duel works in practice may 
be illustrated by actual occurrences of recent 
date. At a public dance in the provinces a dis- 
pute arose between a young lieutenant and a 
student. The latter was under the impression 



Military Service 117 

that the officer had forbidden a lady in the room 
to dance with his brother, and, the evening being 
far advanced, the two passed from words to 
blows. The matter was in due course reported 
by the officer to the Court of Honour of his 
regiment, and this body decided that the insult 
he had received could be atoned only by a duel. 
A challenge was accordingly issued and accepted, 
the conditions being alternate shots at fifteen 
yards until the death or disablement of one of 
the combatants. The president of the military 
Court of Honour himself acted as umpire. After 
three shots had been exchanged the student was 
slightly wounded, but the umpire refused to 
allow the duel to stop, even though the, student 
had meantime offered an apology to the aggrieved 
officer. The fight went on, and, with the fifth 
exchange of shots, the student was mortally 
wounded. The whole of these facts were pub- 
lished by the military authorities, in order to im- 
press an indignant public with a due sense of 
the absolute correctness of their behaviour in 
the matter. 

As a relief to this tragic side of the question, 
the following curious incidents may be related. 
Three men, one a Reserve officer, were prose- 
cuted for a brutal attack upon a fourth person. 
During the trial the judge who heard the case 
chanced to make the comment that the conduct 
of the accused was "ungentlemanlike." He 



ii8 German Life 

was promptly challenged by the military defend- 
ant, but declined to accept the challenge, on the 
ground that his words had been used in the ex- 
ercise of his judicial functions. As he, too, was 
a Reserve officer, the matter came before the 
regimental Court of Honour, which decided that 
he must fight ; and as he still refused, he was 
expelled from the officers' corps. Not long ago, 
a Berlin student of law who had been rebuked 
by the head of the legal faculty for unseemly 
behaviour at an examination, sent his examiner 
a challenge. The professor promptly placed the 
matter in the hands of the police, and the mili- 
tant young man was sentenced to four months' 
detention in a fortress. 

Duels amongst students are common still — 
perhaps much more so than the University au- 
thorities wot of ; and the causes are exactly those 
which tend to, and are held to justify, duels 
amongst officers — insults and indignities for 
which the ordinary apologies of civilised life are 
not held to atone. These duels are carried out 
with the utmost secrecy, and the only know- 
ledge of them which reaches the world at large 
is through cryptic paragraphs which frequently 
find their way into the newspapers. There are 
two kinds of duel — the duel with pistols and 
that with sabres. The pistol duel is fought, as 
a rule, at fifteen paces. Facing each other, with 
their long-muzzled pistols pointed backward 



Military Service 119 

over the shoulder, the combatants advance as 
the umpire counts from one to five, a step for 
each number. They may fire at the first step, 
taking but a moment's aim, or both or either 
may wait until the distance has been lessened. 
But if one fires he must stand his ground until 
the other has had his turn, even though he ad- 
vance the whole five paces. The sabre duel is 
a murderous affair, for the combatants fight 
without any of the protection usual in fencing, 
and time is not called until one of the two has 
been disabled. 

Very different in character, as well as or- 
igin, is the rapier fencing (Mensuren), in which 
students so largely engage. In the main it is a 
harmless exercise of skill and a test of spirit, 
and the worst side of it is that its devotees waste 
much time, and allow their faces to be hacked 
and hewn regardless of appearance. Virtually 
all the students' associations except the theo- 
logical require their members to engage in a 
series of Mensuren. A student enters an asso- 
ciation as freshman, and promotion to full mem- 
bership cannot be attained until he has fought his 
first Mensur. The members of some societies 
are pledged to a fixed number of encounters 
each term, and here the challenges are amicably 
arranged and amicably prosecuted. There is no 
danger in the exercise, though the weapons used 
frequently inflict severe wounds, which leave 



I20 German Life 

their mark for life. For safety's sake the hands, 
eyes, neck, and breast are protected — the hands 
by means of baskets, the eyes by means of iron 
spectacles, and the other parts by means of silk 
bandages and shields. The face and skull are 
thus the parts really exposed to the cuts of the 
glittering blade. At every Mensur a medical stu- 
dent is present, and it is his business to attend to 
the wounds, and stop the encounter if it promises 
to become serious. He discharges his duty 
well, and many are the stories of the surgical 
feats which are performed in emergencies of 
this kind — of how nose-ends and ear-tips are 
gathered expeditiously from the ground and re- 
placed so skilfully as not to betray the temporary 
excision, nay, of how science has even remedied 
the defects of nature by making crooked noses 
straight in the act of restoration. 

The Mensur is quite in keeping with the mil- 
itary spirit of Germany ; and there is no gain- 
saying the fact that, in so far as malice and 
revenge are absent, it has a distinct disciplinary 
value. Its exercise inculcates fortitude, hardi- 
hood, and endurance ; and familiarity with pain 
is not its least useful result. It would be absurd 
to contend that manly virtues can be acquired 
only at the rapier's point, but the Pauhboden, 
or fencing-floor, is a tradition of German aca- 
demic life, and as such it must be judged and 
tolerated. The present Emperor is one of the 



Military Service 121 

warmest defenders of the Mensur. "I hope," 
he said, addressing a students' meeting at Bonn 
some time ago, "that as long as there are Ger- 
man corps students, the spirit which is fostered 
in their corps, and which is steeled by strength 
and courage, will be preserved, and that you 
will always take delight in handling the rapier. 
There are many people who do not understand 
what our Mensiiren really mean, but that must 
not lead us astray. As in the Middle Ages manly 
strength and courage were steeled by the prac- 
tice of jousting or tournaments, so the spirit and 
habits which are acquired from membership of 
a corps furnish us with that degree of fortitude 
which is necessary to us when we go out into 
the world, and which will last as long as there 
are German universities." 

If this fencing led no farther, no grave ob- 
jection could be raised against it. It is, however, 
questionable whether duelling of a serious kind 
would be practiced by German students did not 
the Mensur claim so much devotion. Familiarity 
with the rapier predisposes to the use of more 
dangerous weapons, and students who win re- 
nown on the Paukboden are not slow to try 
conclusions upon the green sward of the early 
morning tryst. 



CHAPTER VI 

PUBLIC EDUCATION 

THE very mention of Germany calls to the 
mind the vision of endless processions of 
pedagogues, with spectacle on nose and ferule 
on side. Germany is a land of schools, just as 
it is a land of soldiers, and, in truth, the associa- 
tion between the school and the army, or, more 
correctly, the army's efficiency, is closer than 
might at first be supposed. Prussia — to speak 
of the soul of the Empire — has had compulsory 
military service for something under a hundred 
years, but it has had compulsory education for 
more than half a century longer, and to-day the 
principle is universal in every one of the other 
States, though schools are not everywhere free, 
even in the same State. But the early introduc- 
tion of compulsory and (very largely) of free 
education is not sutficient of itself to account for 
the exemplary schools which Germany pos- 
sesses. The true secret of their excellence lies 
in the fact that the State insists on controlling 



Public Education 123 

the entire system of education, from the bottom 
to the top. Elementary schools, continuation 
schools, higher schools, technical schools, boys' 
schools, girls' schools, municipal schools, pri- 
vate schools, universities, — all are subject to State 
approval and State regulation, and in everything 
the Minister of Education and Public Worship 
reserves the right of last word ; nor is he slow 
to say it if necessary. It is commonly believed 
that German schools "drive" their children; 
and the discipline which they undergo is cert- 
ainly exacting. Those who enter the elementary 
school do so on the completion of their sixth 
year, and they cannot leave it until the age of 
fourteen. Let the child be never so bright, he 
is not on that account deprived of his full course 
of education. But there is this difference be- 
tween the German and the English system : the 
former does not tolerate the pitiable " half-time " 
system. The school years are undividedly de- 
voted to school work, and the factory and the 
farm are bidden to wait their time. Even four- 
teen is held by many German school reformers 
to be too young an age for optional withdrawal 
from school. The curriculum of the element- 
ary schools naturally differs according to States, 
and also according as the schools are in town 
or country. In the Berlin schools the sub- 
jects taught comprise, besides the three R's, 
grammar, geography, history, religion, natural 



124 German Life 

history, drawing, geometry, singing, drill and 
gymnastics, and sewing. In some schools, 
natural sciences, chemistry, and stenography are 
also taught. Religious instruction is confined to 
the Bible, the Catechism, and the learning of 
the Church hymns in Protestant schools, and to 
this branch of school work great importance 
is attached by the State, which in this matter 
has plenty of zealous supporters, both in the 
ranks of the Conservative and the Catholic party. 
Here it must be noted that the schools are, 
as far as possible, made "confessional" ; that 
is, they take the character, so far as religious 
instruction is concerned, of the Church which 
is most represented by the scholars, whether 
Protestant or Catholic. For the Jews, too, 
special schools are provided in the towns, but 
mixed or "simultaneous" schools also exist. 
Nevertheless, the religious difficulty obtains, 
though it is essentially a modern phase of the 
education question in Germany. Half a century 
ago it was never heard of. How far the na- 
tional sentiment of Prussia was at that time 
from the indifference and antagonism to religious 
teaching which are so marked in these sceptical 
days may be judged by the provisions which 
the constitution of 1850 introduced on the ques- 
tion of religion, religious teaching, and religious 
convictions. These provided for the co-ordina- 
tion of elementary schools, as far as possible, 



Public Education 125 

according to "confessional conditions," as in 
other States, and it was provided that religious 
instruction in these schools should be conducted 
by "the religious communities affected." This 
instruction was to be accepted as a matter of 
course, and there was no idea either of secular 
schools or of relieving parents of the usual obli- 
gation to bring up their children in "reverence 
and godly fear," according to true Scriptural 
rule. 

The religious difficulty is mainly a consequence 
of the widespread rationalism and materialism 
which are to be found amongst those who are 
alienated from the Church. In Prussia the dif- 
ficulty is dealt with in a somewhat rough- 
and-ready fashion. According to the Prussian 
Common Law {Landrecht), religious teaching 
must of necessity form part of the school cur- 
riculum, and only one definite religion can be 
taught in each school, while, as far as may be, 
only children belonging to the religion taught 
are admitted. Thus, while there are separate 
schools for State Church Protestants, for Roman 
Catholics, and for Jews, the Free Churches — like 
the atheistic seceders — are not recognised at all. 
Conscientious scruples are, however, partially 
protected by a provision in the old Common 
Law which states that " children who are to be 
brought up in a different religion from that of 
the elementary school they attend cannot be 



126 German Life 

compelled to receive the religious instruction in 
the same." Originally this provision was intro- 
duced in the interest solely of State Church 
Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, and was ap- 
plied in places where either one or two of 
these sections of the community had no other 
option than to use an alien school. In time, 
however, two other classes of people came to 
benefit by the exemption, — the new Protestant 
sects which appeared in various parts of Ger- 
many, and the free-thinkers who had formally 
withdrawn from the National Church, as the 
law of the land allows them to do. Under suc- 
cessive Ministers of Education — the last of 
them Ministers Falk and von Gossler — the 
children of "dissident" parents were exempted 
from religious teaching, without restriction, on a 
simple declaration that such parents would take 
other measures to provide for their religious 
instruction. Minister von Zedlitz, however, in 
1892 introduced a new reservation, when he 
made exemption from religious teaching depend- 
ent upon proof that the substitutionary teaching 
provided elsewhere by the parents was adequate 
in character. Dr. Bosse, his successor, main- 
tained the same position ; and when taxed with 
infringing the principle of freedom of conscience, 
as laid down by the Constitution, advanced the 
ingenious contention that the consciences of 
parents could not be offended owing to their 



Public Education 127 

children being compelled to receive religious 
instruction, for such instruction was a matter 
between the school and the child alone, and the 
law did not recognise freedom of conscience 
on the part of schoolboys and schoolgirls, — 
if it did, they might as well close all the schools 
at once. This, then, is how the practice of the 
schools rests at present. Children maybe with- 
drawn during the religious teaching hour, but 
only on their parents positively undertaking to 
provide such teaching elsewhere ; nor is it 
possible for protesting parents to obtain other 
redress. 

But, again, the excellence of the Government 
elementary schools is also due to the systematic 
training given to the teachers. Not only are 
the preparatory colleges beyond praise, but the 
college course is long and severe. The pupil- 
teacher, pitiable product of the English school- 
starving system, is unknown. Teaching of 
even an elementary character is deferred until 
the theoretical part of training is over, — the 
eight or ten years' continuous study, first in a 
higher school, be it observed, and then in a 
training college. The result is that qualified 
teachers enter upon the serious work of life and 
become independent far later than with us, but 
popular education gains incalculably by the 
longer and severer discipline through which 
they are required to pass. The general type 



128 German Life 

of teacher, socially, is distinctly a superior one. 
There is, indeed, little difference between the 
teachers of the better elementary and those of 
the higher schools, so far as rank of life goes. 
The fact is, that no small part of the students 
who fail to pass the very severe examination 
which is necessary before a higher -school 
teacher's diploma can be obtained fall back upon 
the elementary school, for which a much easier 
test is imposed. Yet the remuneration is, on 
the whole, very inadequate, as English ideas 
are. A salary of ;^ioo is regarded as relatively 
liberal, and one of ;^i5o as beyond the dreams 
of avarice. There is, however, a certain com- 
pensation in the fact that moderate pensions are 
also offered after a long term of service. Yet, 
meanwhile, the teacher has to live, and he feels 
the pinch severely. But here a feature of the 
German system which is in every respect laud- 
able must be noted. The salaries of teachers 
are fixed, and rise with the years of service, 
instead of depending on the results of examina- 
tions, or on scholars' attendances. The principle 
of bribery which was introduced into the Eng- 
lish system by a mercenary and business spirit — 
partly with a view of running education on com- 
mercial principles, and partly that children might 
be hurried through the school to the factory as 
soon as possible — is unknown in Germany. 
Thus, though there may be over-pressure, there 



Public Education 129 

is no cramming. The children pursue a course 
of instruction which is normal throughout, 
and their training is honest, thorough, and 
rational. 

The care of the childrei does not stop, how- 
ever, at their mental development. Gymnastic 
exercises on scientific principles form a serious 
part of the school plan, both for the younger 
and older children. Scholars' excursions, in 
amplification of the ordinary lessons in natural 
science, are a very attractive feature of the 
summer work. School baths are becoming 
more and more common. For the children of 
poor parents free meals are supplied in many 
places during the winter months. The school 
doctor is also a responsible official in the larger 
towns. He is engaged to exercise a general 
oversight over the health of the scholars, and 
to give advice to the authorities upon hygienic 
and medical questions when required. The 
municipality of Berlin employs the partial 
services of a large number of experienced doc- 
tors in this way. In every direction enterprise, 
thoroughness, and practical common-sense char- 
acterise the German elementary school system. 
The expenditure has become far greater, the 
machinery vastly more complicated, than could 
have seemed possible a decade or two ago ; but 
that is because Germany, having hitherto led the 
way in popular education, has determined not 



I30 German Life 

to fall behind, and has faith in the result of its 
investment and its endeavours. 

In the co-ordination of public schools, as it has 
been developed in Prussia, no fewer than seven 
types of secondary schools intervene between 
the elementary schools and the universities. 
First come the Gymnasia, which are strictly 
classical schools. The Gymnasium is the first 
door to the highest possibilities of State service 
and professional promotion ; for a student who 
has passed the final examination in the first form 
{Prima) may claim entrance to the universities 
and to State technical academies of every kind, 
or he may at once undergo the specific examina- 
tion requisite to becoming a civil servant. The 
Progymnasia are like the Gymnasia, save that 
they lack the first or highest form. The Real- 
gymnasia retain Latin, but drop Greek, and in 
place of it give more time to some modern sub- 
jects. The lowest class of Gymnasia are the 
Realprogymnasia, which take the same subjects 
as the last, but do not carry their pupils so far. 
The Oberrealschulen and the Realschulen, as a 
rule, dispense both with Greek and Latin, and, 
as is meet in schools intended for boys who will 
follow a commercial life, give great attention to 
living languages and to so-called practical sub- 
jects. At the bottom of the list come the 
Higher Burgher Schools, whose teaching is even 
more mercantile in character. But each of these 



Public Education 131 

different schools offers to the youth who passes 
its final examination some special opening in the 
service of the State. The prospect before the 
lad whose education has been obtained in the 
Burgher School is, of course, very limited, and 
if he secures some junior clerkship in the Law 
Courts or the Post Office, he will be content ; 
but as the status of the school rises, so the social 
and professional prospect of its pupils widens. 
For every State servant is what he is by educa- 
tional qualification. Everything is ordered with 
scientific exactness, and a sensible father, before 
determining to which school his son shall go, 
considers, besides the depth of his purse, the 
ultimate career in prospect. 

Not only in Prussia, but in other German 
States, the discovery has been made that the 
Gymnasia have been excessively fostered, to the 
detriment of the non-classical schools, and a 
strong reaction has set in favourable to the 
greater encouragement of higher schools with a 
modern side. Against the Gymnasia, as such, 
there is little or nothing to be said. As classical 
schools they are irreproachable, and the students 
they send out are, in their way, intellectual 
prodigies. But in so far as the giving of undue 
prominence to classical subjects makes education 
one-sided and unpractical, the Gymnasia have 
much to answer for and much to make good. 
"The elect minority of students who pass 



132 German Life 

through all the stages until the last gauntlet of 
examination has been run, win for themselves 
■clear title to respect, for the discipline is no 
child's play, but the sacrifice is often a heavy 
one. They have toiled laboriously up the 
heights ; yet, instead of the world lying at their 
feet, as might be supposed, the prospect before 
them is often very limited. If they wait long 
enough, the career they have had in view may 
come within their reach, but the waiting is gen- 
erally tedious and trying. Should they, how- 
ever, abandon their original design, and look for 
other openings, the choice is small indeed. For 
the worst of this system of education is, that the 
youths who, after a long and terribly hard school 
course, are unable to gain admission to any of 
the professions, cannot easily turn to anything 
\else. They are only fit for the narrow sphere 
upon which their hopes and aims were set. 
They lack adaptability, because their education 
has been one-sided, and has paid little or no 
regard to the requirements and conditions of 
practical life. Worse, however, is the case of 
those who, after spending many years in studies 
far above their capacities, a.re sent into the world 
half educated. The number of these is very 
large. Since every man of much money and 
little discretion wishes his sons, whether promis- 
ing or not, to go through the Gymnasium, the 
lower forms of the classical schools are always 



Public Education 133 

crowded. Naturally, the progress of the youths 
is not equal. Those of ability advance normally 
from form to form, while those without aptitude 
for learning remain behind, and drudge for years 
at the rudiments of an erudite knowledge which 
Divine Providence never intended for heads like 
theirs. It is an absurd arrangement, but the 
fault lies at the doors of foolish parents. So the 
years pass on, and by the time the backward 
youths should have reached the highest form 
they are only half-way to the top, and at this 
stage they are turned out, — educational failures. 
The ten years or more which should have cov- 
ered the whole curriculum of the Gymnasium 
have been expended in struggling through the 
elementary stages. Useful subjects have been 
neglected altogether in favour of studies far 
above the learner's capacity. The boy has gone 
through endless labour, and the result is of the 
least tangible character. If, on the other hand, 
these precious years had been spent in a school 
of a lower grade, little or none of the time need 
have been thrown away. The lad would not 
have been turned out a pundit, but he would 
not have remained an ignoramus. As he went 
to the Gymnasium he had to submit to its in- 
exorable discipline. It did the best it could with 
the material at disposal. That better results 
were not achieved was not, in his case at any 
rate, the fault of the education there imparted, 



134 German Life 

but of the learner, who was not fitted to attempt 
its acquisition." The Gymnasia will never be 
dethroned, however, though the tendency is to 
reduce their number, and proportionately to in- 
crease the supply of modern schools, which, in 
the words of tlie present Emperor, shall turn out 
no longer, " Greeks and Romans, but Germans," 
hence reducing the present "over-production of 
learned and so-called educated people, the num- 
ber of whom is now greater than the nation can 
bear." All Germany jubilantly welcomed the 
Emperor's insistence on reform in this direction, 
when he took up the thorny subject a few years 
ago ; but, though a beginning has been made, 
much remains to be done. 

As for the cost of this higher education, it 
is ridiculously low. Figures obtained from five 
hundred Gymnasia and Progymnasia showed 
the maximum yearly rates to be under £,^ los. 
in a hundred and twenty-five schools, £,} los. 
to £^ in two hundred and one schools, ;^5 to 
£^ 155. in a hundred and twenty-five, and over 
;^5 155. in only fifty-four cases. Again, of two 
hundred and seventeen Realgymnasia, Realpro- 
gymnasia, and Oberrealschulen, twenty charged 
less than £^ \os., and a hundred and twelve £'y 
and over. Of a hundred and seventy-seven 
Realschulen and Higher Burgher schools, eighty- 
seven charged £^ los. and thirty-five ^5 and 
upwards. In Bavaria the lowest rates were found 



Public Education 135 

to exist, as, for example, in very exceptional 
cases, 95., 105., and 125. a year; while in Sax- 
ony, which had, on the whole, the highest 
figures, as much as ^10 105., ;£i^ i6s., and 
;j^i5 was charged. The rates in Prussia aver- 
aged about ^4 155. While education of the 
highest class is obtainable on terms so moderate, 
the pupils benefit at the expense of the teachers, 
who are deserving of far better payment than 
they, as a rule, receive. In the smaller provincial 
towns, headmasters (called rectors) of higher 
boys' and girls' schools can readily be had for 
any sum between ;^ioo and ;,^200, and assist- 
ants for special departments for from ;£6o to 
^100. 

From the secondary school to the university is 
a step far more natural, and far more frequently 
taken, than in England. Perhaps in no country 
in the world is the door of educational advance- 
ment so wide open as in Germany, where a boy 
of genuine intelligence and capacity, no matter 
how humble his origin, or how straitened his 
resources, may make the triumphant progress 
from the elementary school to the university 
without fear of obstacle, or — given staying 
power — of failure. One of the most famous 
academic teachers of to-day in Germany, a 
thinker of world-wide reputation, travelled this 
selfsame way, and is a proof of the distinction 
which is within the reach of a plodding country 



136 German Life 

schoolboy who betimes goes not unwillingly 
to school, and in fuller years has a love of learn- 
ing for learning's sake, together with the ambi- 
tion to put his gifts to practical use. 

How seriously the Germans take education, 
how devoted they are to its acquisition, may be 
judged from the fact that no fewer than seventy- 
five per cent, of all the pupils who during a 
period of twelve years left the Gymnasia and 
Realgymnasia of Prussia, having taken the 
final certificate of "maturity," proceeded at 
once to the universities. Of these, thanks to its 
multiplicity of States and Courts, Germany is 
the fortunate possessor of no fewer than twenty- 
two of all grades. In every university there are 
three classes of teachers. There are first the 
Ordinary Professors, with whom are ranked 
Honorary Ordinary Professors, where such ex- 
ist ; next come the Extraordinary Professors, 
sometimes few in number, though often as nu- 
merous as the ordinary teachers ; and then quite 
an army of Privatdocenten, who do not bear the 
title of professor. The latter are teachers on 
probation, generally young doctors who, after 
going through the university course with dis- 
tinction, decide to follow an academic career. 
Almost invariably they are men of power and 
promise, and the only pity is that the univers- 
ities compensate them so meagrely while using 
them so freely. But few even of th<;-. professors 



Public Education 137 

can be said to be spoiled in this respect. High 
thinking has still to go hand - in - hand with 
low living, and the flesh to be flagellated for the 
spirit's and the taxpayer's sake, — for the main 
burden of academic salaries falls on the State 
treasury. 

The students are best off, for the fees charged 
are, as a rule, almost nominal. For several 
pounds a term the student may hear as many 
lectures as he is able to work up, and in the 
event of poverty he can always obtain par- 
tial or complete remission of fees. A legend of 
Rostock University is that, owing to the num- 
ber of its scholarships, an official is deputed to 
meet all trains at the beginning of term for the 
purpose of forcing "free places " {Freistellen) on 
the incoming students. Nor are poor students 
rare. If any testimony were needed on the point 
it would be afforded by the many offers of peda- 
gogic service which are to be found affixed to 
every university blackboard. Money must be 
more precious than time when lessons are of- 
fered at sixpence the hour, and daily tutors can 
be employed for " ^2 a month and supper free." 
But even more impressive tokens of the low 
value placed upon educational service might be 
quoted from this fertile source of information 
and entertainment. Here is a literal copy of a 
blackboard announcement, jotted down in a 
note-book dur'ng my Berlin days : " A classical 



138 German Life 

philologist is desired as private tutor for one 
pupil. The principal requirements are, that he 
shall have passed his State examinations [that is, 
taken his doctor's degree], and served his pro- 
bationary year as teacher and that he shall be 
expert in stenography. In return for his services 
free board and lodging are offered." Simply 
that, and nothing more ! To this announcement 
a student's hand had added : " Is that all ? Will 
he not be required to know music, English, 
French, ventriloquism, and croquet ? " It is a 
sin unto death to disfigure a blackboard notice, 
yet even the Rector Magnificus himself would 
have pardoned this offending annotator.. 

The frequenters of a German university are 
decidedly diverse in composition, and represent 
— as is proper — a fuller and fairer admixture of 
the staple elements of society than can be found 
associated with any other national institution. 
A careful classification of the students who ma- 
triculated at the universities of Prussia during four 
successive terms showed the total of 12,709 na- 
tive students to be made up of 2198 sons of 
tradesmen (merchants, shopkeepers, etc.), 1981 
sons of manufacturers and artisans, 1849 sons of 
officials without academic education, 16 13 sons 
of independent farmers, 1099 sons of teachers 
without academic education, 890 sons of clergy- 
men, 888 sons of State and municipal officials 
and solicitors with academic education, 471 sons 



Public Education i39 

of doctors, 416 sons of teachers with academic 
education, 351 sons of retired persons living on 
their means, 2^} sons of large landowners, 216 
sons of hotel keepers, 185 sons of apothecaries, 
and 127 sons of officers of the army. Yet this 
mingling in the lecture-rooms of classes so dis- 
similar does not really imply any intimate as- 
sociation on equal terms, or even the tacit 
forgetfulness of social disparities, of which all 
alike are conscious. These disparities are not 
emphasised, do not even receive open recogni- 
tion; but there is none the less an absence of 
that personal tie between the students which 
exists so largely in the English residential col- 
leges. The German universities are not, how- 
ever, residential, but are essentially teaching 
institutions, to which the student goes, or should 
go, so many (or so few) times a day, to hear 
lectures, and thereafter to follow his own sweet 
will and way in the world. Hence the bond of 
student comradeship is slight indeed, unless cult- 
ivated by extra-university methods, and espe- 
cially by those of the students' corps, with their 
accompanying jollities and hon-camaraderie. 

But the disadvantage of this looseness of the 
tie which connects the student with his university 
is chiefly seen in the absence of effective control 
over study, and this is a serious matter where 
idle students — for there are plenty such — are 
concerned. Whether a student seriously works 



I40 German Life 

or not is known to no one but himself and event- 
ually the examiners, who, when his semesters 
are over, are called upon to judge his fitness for 
the doctor's title. His real teachers — the pro- 
fessors whose lectures he more or less regularly 
attends — know as a rule but little of his progress, 
and often care less. Their duty in the matter is 
very perfunctory. It is to initial the student's 
lecture-register at the beginning and at the end 
of term, — at the beginning of term in testimony 
to the fact that a specific lecture has been taken 
{belegt) and paid for, and at the end of term in 
testimony that it has been attended. But how 
does the professor know this? He does not 
know it at all, and never, or seldom, tries to 
learn the truth or otherwise of the certificate he 
gives. And yet, when, after lecturing to an 
average room of a score and a half students all 
through term, a professor finds himself invited 
to sign a hundred books, it should occur to his 
mind either that the function which he is dis- 
charging is an utterly meaningless one, or that 
he is taking part in a pious fraud. Not all pro- 
fessors are indifferent upon this subject, how- 
ever; and though custom is difficult to break, 
and traditions die hard, it is scarcely too much to 
expect that before long one of two things will 
happen, — either steps will be taken to exercise 
a certain oversight over the work of the students 
who duly matriculate, and to see that the lectures 



Public Education 141 

which they take are really attended, or the 
teachers will be relieved of participation in a 
formality which, while it serves no useful pur- 
pose, effectively protects idle students from 
detection. 

While, however, familiar intercourse between 
the teachers and their hearers has largely passed 
out of fashion, the personal relationship is in 
some degree cultivated by means of the seminary. 
This is an inner circle of students, formed for 
specialised study, consultation, debate, and in- 
dependent investigation, under the guidance of 
the professor in connexion with whose lectures 
it is conducted. The seminary meets, as a rule, 
during hours not taken up by ordinary lectures, 
and is a powerful stimulus to earnest study, and 
a pleasant means of bringing professor and 
student into nearer acquaintance. At every 
meeting a paper is read and then criticised indis- 
criminately, after which the presiding professor 
sums up, and passes judgment upon the opinions 
which have been uttered. Then the German 
professor, whom conventional ideas picture as 
the incarnation of aridity, is seen from his most 
attractive side, and he proves a thoroughly human 
creature indeed, as different from the common 
caricature as a black-and-white drawing from the 
warm colours of nature. 



CHAPTER VII 

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THOUGHT 

IN nothing does it behoove the critic of German 
life to exercise more circumspection than in 
his generalisations on the subject of religion. 
Mention has been made of the variety of race to 
be found within the pale of the Empire, and this 
racial variety implies also confessional variety. 
Of the entire population of the country the 
Protestants number nearly two-thirds, .; rather 
over one-third are Roman Catholics ; and about 
one and a quarter per cent, (or well over half 
a million) are Jews. One religious division of 
the population, which occupies so conspicuous 
a place in Anglo-Saxon countries, is entirely 
insignificant in Germany, — that of the Protestant 
Nonconformists. These exist, but in feeble num- 
bers, and their churches are recruited almost 
exclusively from the working classes. It is 
noticeable that in some States Protestantism and 
Catholicism are strikingly localised. In Prussia, 
for example, the strongholds of the former are 
142 



Religious Life and Thought 143 

Brandenburg, Pomerania, East Prussia, Schles- 
wig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Nassau, and the 
province of Saxony, while Catholicism has the 
upper hand in the Rhine Province, Posen, West- 
phalia, and the Upper Silesia. In Bavaria the 
Catholics number nearly three-quarters of the 
entire population, and, in the South, Protestants 
are few and far between. Saxony, on the other 
hand, is almost solidly Protestant, though the 
royal family is Catholic. Other States in which 
Protestantism is in the ascendant are Oldenburg, 
Wurtemberg, and Hesse, while Catholicism is 
the religion of the majority in Baden and Alsace- 
Lorraine. The Jews are most numerous — rela- 
tively to population — in the cities of Berlin and 
Hamburg, where they form five per cent, of the 
whole, and least numerous in Saxony, where 
they are only one in four hundred. 

The domain of religion is one which the con- 
stitution of the Empire leaves severely alone, 
for beyond guaranteeing to all citizens freedom 
of conscience in religious beliefs — a guarantee 
which is only partially discharged — it allows 
the various States to manage their ecclesiastical 
concerns as they like. Each State has its own 
Established Church, either Protestant or Catholic, 
and in some States several mutually antagonistic 
Churches are endowed. In Prussia the Protes- 
tant, Roman Catholic, and Old Catholic Churches 
are subsidised, and in other States the Jewish 



144 German Life 

Church is supported as well. It is an odd ar- 
rangement, which leads to odd contradictions. 
Thus, in Baden, State patronage and help are 
given to one Church which upholds the doc- 
trines of the Reformation and one which op- 
poses them ; to Catholics who accept the dogma 
of papal infallibility and Catholics who repudiate 
it ; and, as a crowning proof of impartiality, to 
a religious system which rejects altogether the 
Christian basis common to the other three en- 
dowed Churches. It is needful to remember, 
however, that even the Protestant State Church 
is not a homogeneous body. It, too, is divided 
into the Reformed and Lutheran sections, though, 
of course, the members of both accept the com- 
mon description, "Evangelical." The division, 
which is less acutely emphasised now than form- 
erly, is a matter of sacramental interpretation. 
The Lutherans accept the doctrine of the Real 
Presence known as consubstantiation, while the 
Reformed Church, following the Swiss reformer 
Zwingli, attach to the Eucharist a purely sym- 
bolical meaning ; and in Prussia this is the 
Church of the vast majority of Protestants. It 
is noteworthy that the only Churches in Ger- 
many which are episcopal are the Catholic and 
Free Methodist, the latter a small body of quite 
modern introduction. 

Not only are Churches liberally endowed by 
the State, but the State takes rehdon under its 



Religious Life and Thought 145 

wing to an extent which an Englishman wil.1 
find it difficult to credit. In Protestant States 
the sovereign is siunmus episcopus, and in theory 
presides over the Supreme Consistory, whose 
appointment rests with him, or, by royal dele- 
gation, with the Minister of Public Worship. 
Even over the Catholic Church a large degree of 
control is exercised in return for State endow- 
ment. Thus, in Prussia, save in the Rhenish 
provinces, royal confirmation is necessary to the 
investiture of both archbishops and bishops. 
Before the ratification of his election a prelate 
must take a special and solemn oath of allegiance 
to the King, declaring that he will be "submis- 
sive, faithful, and obedient to his Royal Majesty 
of Prussia (and his lawful successors in the gov- 
ernment) as my most gracious King and Sover- 
eign, promote his welfare according to my 
ability, prevent injury and detriment to him, 
and particularly endeavour carefully to cultivate 
in the minds of the clergy and people under my 
episcopal care a sense of reverence and fidelity 
towards the King, love for the Fatherland, 
obedience to the laws, and all those virtues 
which in a Christian denote a good citizen, and 
I will not suffer any clergy subject to me to teach 
or act in a contrary spirit. In particular, I vow 
that I will not support any society or association, 
either at home or abroad, which might endanger 
the public security, and will inform his Majesty 



146 German Life 

of any proposals made either in my diocese or 
elsewhere, that might prove injurious to the 
State," etc. 

The foregoing form of the Catholic episcopal 
oath of fidelity to the Crown was adopted in 
1887, on the conclusion of the famous struggle 
between the State and the Romish Church in 
Prussia, known as the Kulturhampf, one inci- 
dent of which was the enactment of the civil 
marriage. The echoes of the storm caused by 
this measure — which was introduced in Prussia 
in 1874, and in the Empire in 1875— have not 
even yet quite died away. The Government of 
the day found itself on that occasion in strange 
company, for its only cordial allies were the 
democratic and free-thinking parties. The Ul- 
tramontanes fought against the law with all 
the bitterness of men jealous for ecclesiastical 
prerogatives, but the Conservatives also cordially 
disliked, and to a large extent openly opposed, 
the innovation, as being the beginning of a 
dangerous course of secularisation whose end 
no one dare predict. " The necessary conse- 
quence of a religionless civil marriage," wrote 
a leading organ of the Church-Conservative 
party at the time, " will be a religionless school, 
for we cannot imagine how anyone can hope to 
preserve a Christian school when the way is 
being so carefully prepared for modern heathen- 
ism by the institution of the civil marriage. 



Religious Life and Thought 147 

Moreover, with that modern heathenism the 
monarchy and the divinely ordained sover- 
eignty will certainly be incompatible. Indeed, 
let the Christian marriage go, and we know not 
what will remain in the future." Events have 
entirely falsified this and similar doleful predic- 
tions. Though the institution of the civil mar- 
riage is still regarded with disfavour by large 
sections of Protestants, as well as by the entire 
Catholic population, it would not be right to 
attribute to it any diminution of Church influ- 
ence amongst the people. The State has done 
nothing to discourage ecclesiastical marriage as a 
voluntary, yet decorous and desirable ordinance, 
supplementary to the ceremony prescribed by the 
law, and the Church has not spared any effort to 
discountenance on the part of its adherents satis- 
faction with the civil rite. In Westphalia, to take 
one of the most favourable illustrations, over 
ninety-eight per cent, of the marriages between 
Protestants are ratified by the rites of the Church, 
and though in Berlin only two-thirds of the 
marriages receive the Church's benediction, the 
reason is the widespread infidelity amongst 
the working classes, who formerly ridiculed the 
religious office to which the law compelled them 
to submit, where, indeed, they did not prefer 
irregular marriage to the recognition of the 
Church's claim to interfere in their domestic 
arrangements. 



148 German Life 

In Prussia the clergy receive State patronage 
in the most practical of ways, for a considerable 
part of their emoluments comes from the public 
treasury. To the income which accrues to a 
benefice locally by endowments and otherwise, 
is added what is called a "dotation" from the 
State, rising from ^80. Quite recently some 
important alterations came into force in con- 
nexion with these dotations. Marked inequali- 
ties in income were diminished, and minimum 
stipends were fixed, while the ecclesiastical 
parishes were made the administrators of all en- 
dowments, and at the same time were made re- 
sponsible for the due payment to incumbents of 
the incomes allotted to their benefices. One 
effect of this change is to divorce the clergyman 
from the glebe, which hitherto he has often cult- 
ivated on his own account, and the change, 
though it may take many a round stick from a 
square hole, is by no means regarded as an un- 
qualified advantage. Prince Bismarck used to 
say that had he the power he would let the pay- 
ment of every Minister of State take the form of 
a moderate estate. This he would enjoin him to 
cultivate to the best advantage, with a summary 
"There, make the most you can of it, for it is 
all you will get." In that way, he argued, the 
Minister of State — and perhaps it was the head 
of the Treasury he had most in mind — would 
think more sympathetically of his brother cult- 



Religious Life and Thought 149 

ivators of the soil, and of taxpayers in general, 
for a community of interest and aim, of fortune 
and misfortune, would exist such as is hardly 
possible when Ministers are paid down in golden 
coins, — so many of them a year, whether agri- 
culture and industry flourish or decay. Unques- 
tionably much of the sympathy which has 
knitted the rural pastor and his flock together 
has been due to the fact that both have lived in 
vital touch with Nature, wooing her, studying her 
moods and caprices, wresting from her health 
and wealth, so that, though different in many 
respects, their daily interests were largely iden- 
tical. That the relationship between the two 
will be improved by a change which will cut 
pastors from the old glebe-land may reasonably 
be doubted. 

It cannot be said that the Church attracts to 
any degree the best elements of society. The 
clergy are in general very well educated, as is 
inevitable, since the candidates for pastoral office 
must pass through the university, like all other 
State officials of the higher grades. But the 
Church is not in Germany an aristocratic calling. 
The professions which the higher classes of so- 
ciety particularly feed are the army, the superior 
branches of the State administrative service, and 
the law ; and the Church is regarded as beneath 
notice. An examination of the matriculations at 
the universities of Prussia during four successive 



150 German Life 

terms shows that }} per cent, of the Protestant 
theological students were the sons of minor offi- 
cials and teachers, 20 per cent, were the sons of 
clergymen, 14 per cent, sons of peasants, 13 per 
cent, sons of manufacturers and artisans, and 
only 6 per cent, sons of higher State and munici- 
pal officials. On the other hand, of the Catholic 
students of theology 29 per cent, were the sons 
of peasants, 29 per cent, sons of officials and 
teachers of the lower grades, and 22.6 per cent, 
sons of artisans and manufacturers. 

So far is Prussia from adopting the theories of 
religious equality, which are mere commonplaces 
in most countries, that not only are Church rates 
for the maintenance of public worship levied 
indiscriminately on entire communities, but 
churches are still built out of municipal funds. 
By an old decree (dated 1573) of the Elector John 
George, forgotten until it was resuscitated by a 
needy Church Council, it is provided that where 
the funds needed for the building and repair of 
churches in the province of Brandenburg cannot 
be covered by the existing ecclesiastical endow- 
ments of the parish concerned, the municipality 
or commune (in town and village respectively) 
may be required to provide them. Not long ago 
a Berlin church needed enlargement, and, relying 
upon this decree, the congregation called on the 
Municipal Council to make a contribution of 
;^5 500 towards the cost. That body, which is 



Religious Life and Thought 151 

permanently Radical, and has always been 
distinguished by a peculiar antipathy against 
churches, declined ; but the question coming 
before the highest court in the land, decision 
was given in favour of the claim, and a payment 
was made, much to the disgust of the mayor 
and corporation. Had this sixteenth-century 
decree failed, the church could have fallen back 
upon one of later date, for there is still in legal 
force a Royal Order of King Frederick I. (1702) 
which commands that : "Should churches or 
churchyards need to be built or repaired, every 
inhabitant and subject of every place, whatever 
his religion, shall help with all industry, and 
shall readily pay the proportion that may be re- 
quired of him." Prussia received the gift of a 
constitution half a century ago ; but while be- 
stowing upon the nation many new civic rights, 
it did not relieve it of old obligations, and that 
of church building is one of the most galling to 
the modern free-thinker. In spite of Electoral 
Decrees and Royal Orders, however, it is ques- 
tionable whether the notorious dearth of churches 
from which Berlin so long suffered would have 
been removed but for the pious disposition of 
the present Emperor. During his short reign 
more churches have been built in the capital 
than during all the preceding ninety years of the 
century, and every one was sorely needed. Not 
only so, but the Church-Extension movement is 



152 German Life 

progressing every year towards the ideal of the 
ecclesiastical authorities, — the provision of a 
Protestant State Church for every twenty-five 
thousand of the inhabitants. The fact that these 
churches have to a large extent been built by 
private subscription may be taken as a proof 
that, in Berlin at least, the old spirit of depend- 
ence upon the State is in this domain giving 
way to self-help and self-reliance. 

The State patronage of religion means other- 
wise a good deal more in Germany than in Eng- 
land. It is the theory of the law that every 
Protestant is a member of the State Church, 
unless he have formally seceded, which is a legal 
proceeding ; and the ecclesiastical authorities do 
not lose sight of this fact. It happens in the 
provinces that parishioners who systematically 
neglect public worship, or are found associating 
themselves with schismatical or heterodox move- 
ments, are warned by the heads of the Church, 
and in the event of continued contumacy are 
struck off the list of members, and so are de- 
prived of the right of voting in the ecclesiastical 
affairs of the parish. The yearly secessions 
from the Church make nowadays a respectable 
total, but it is noticeable that a great change has 
taken place in the character of the "Dissent" 
which prevails in Germany. Half a century 
ago the "Dissident" who withdrew from the 
National Church did so from superfluity instead 



Religious Life and Thought 153 

of paucity of religious scruples ; it was his con- 
scientious objection to State establishments, or 
such establishments on the existing basis, which 
caused him to go out into the wilderness. In 
modern times the Dissident is generally a free- 
thinker of a particularly outspoken and arrogant 
kind, who publicly emphasises his rejection of 
the Christian religion by announcing his with- 
drawal from the Church. The law is, however, 
very jealous of any indignity offered either to the 
Church or to religion in public speech or writing, 
and it is an indictable offence to attack or to 
agitate against either in an offensive way. And 
yet, in spite of the powerful State support which 
it is able to command and is ever ready enough 
to employ, it would be idle to pretend that the 
influence of the Protestant Church is as great as 
might fairly be expected. In the rural districts 
its position is uniformly strong, but in the towns 
it is far from proportionate to its opportunities. 
The working classes largely distrust it, from a 
belief that it has allowed itself to become the 
handmaid of a political system, and the middle 
classes have fallen to a great extent under the 
spirit of indifferentism which sprang up when 
the Church lost in strength and vigour, and 
failed, owing to lack of expansiveness, to respond 
to the new demands made upon it by the modern 
growth of urban populations, and thus ground 
has been lost which it will be difficult to regain. 



154 German Life 

It is none the less remarkable how strong the 
hold which the festivals of the Church year still 
maintain upon all classes alike. In no other coun- 
try do these festivals more partake of the character 
of national observances ; and many a man who 
professes to have shaken himself loose from 
ecclesiastical associations unconsciously pays 
homage to the Church and the religion he dis- 
dains by the heartiness with which he keeps up 
some, at least, of the commemorations of the 
Church's calendar. Christmas is emphatically 
the national festival of the year, and with it no 
other can be 'named in the same breath. The 
holiday lasts three days, and it is a holiday in- 
deed. Throughout the length and breadth of 
the land, work of every kind is suspended by 
universal consent, and Germany becomes young 
again, as it throws itself, with an enthusiasm 
which English people would hardly understand, 
into the enjoyment of the gracious amenities of 
the season. The festival begins on Christmas 
Eve, or Holy Eve {Heiliger Abend), as it is pret- 
tily called, and the fall of dusk is a sign for the 
emptying of the streets, the end of the day's 
work and traffic, and the gathering of every 
family round its own Christmas-tree. Heilig' 
Abend would have no meaning for Germans, 
either old or young, without the presence in the 
home of this simple symbol. The tree is adorned 
with glittering tinsel and numberless tapers, and 



Religious Life and Thought i55 

round the table on which it stands are arranged 
the presents which are so liberally exchanged 
by the members of the family at this time. 

The Christmas-tree has gone out of fashion in 
some countries, but in Germany it occupies a 
place in the domestic affections which no lapse 
of years and no aggression of the modern spirit 
seem to threaten. National customs have been 
changed and modified in a hundred directions, 
but the green Tannenhaum defies all innovation, 
and is found in the old place of honour in every 
German household when Christmas Eve comes 
round. And not only there : for the spirit of 
good-will which the season evokes shows itself 
in no more timely or more welcome way than 
by supplying the treasured fir tree to hospital, 
barracks, workhouse, gaol, and wherever else 
Christmas Eve would be a melancholy mockery 
but for such thoughtful charity. Pass into the 
cemeteries and churchyards, too, and you will 
even see miniature Christmas-trees rising out of 
the snow on every side, in token that the dead 
are not forgotten in this time of universal happi- 
ness. To me, this strange and profound devo- 
tion to the Christmas-tree has always seemed 
one of the gentlest, as well as the most reverent, 
traits of the German character. 

Passion Week, called in Germany Still Week 
{Stille Woche), or, more usually, Lamentation 
Week {Charwoche), is the principal churchgoing 



156 German Life 

season of the year, and Good Friday brings 
more communicants to the altar than any other 
day. Another solemn festival to which great 
public importance is attached is the Commemo- 
ration of the Dead, or Todtenfest, which falls on 
the last Sunday in the Church year, and corre- 
sponds to the Feast of All Saints in the Catholic 
calendar. Upon this day and upon Good Friday, 
alone in the whole year, the law requires the 
suspension of all public amusements. The 
churches hold services from morning until even- 
ing, so vast are the numbers who throng to 
■devotions ; and as black is the universal colour 
— of altar and pulpit, which are hung in crape, 
as well as of personal attire — the picture pre- 
sented is decidedly depressing. The public 
graveyards are similarly crowded by pious visit- 
ors, for it is a day of common mourning, and 
for their consolation the clergy usually give ad- 
dresses in the open air at frequent intervals. 
Prayer and Penance Day, which falls variously, 
is still a serious institution in several of the Ger- 
man States, though it is no longer universal. 
The institution goes back to the time when Ger- 
many suffered from the horrors of war, pest, 
famine, and other ills which civilisation and 
sanitation together have succeeded, in recent 
times, in keeping more or less within check. In 
Saxony, for example, it dates from the begin- 
ning of the seventeenth century, when the Elector 





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Religious Life and Thought 157 

John George the First issued a decree ordering 
the observance of three hours of prayer and 
penance every week, — an infliction which the 
impious Saxons succeeded in time in reducing 
to one complete day in twelve months. In 
Prussia, national penance has only been done 
since 181 3, when Frederick William III. was still 
uncertain as to the issue of his desperate struggle 
to escape from the clutches of Napoleon. 

Residence abroad is a good corrective of re- 
ligious narrowness ; and if English people trav- 
elled more, and observed more during their 
travels, instead of keeping together as though 
in mortal dread of the unknown foreigner, the 
fiction would soon cease to be popular that true 
religion and undefiled is only to be found in one 
very circumscribed part of Europe. It does not 
take long to convince the peripatetic student of 
men and manners that, in spite of the different 
ecclesiastical names and doctrines which people 
take to themselves. Western mankind is pretty 
much the same in all the essential elements of 
character. Religion may be professed with 
greater or less insistence, and religious rites be 
observed with varying regularity and devotion ; 
yet look only below the surface of things, and 
the same human excellencies and shortcomings, 
the same graces and blemishes, the same su- 
preme virtues and sordid vices, are found every- 
where, though naturally not in the same 



158 German Life 

proportions. It may be conceded that the re- 
ligious spirit is not shown in Germany in all the 
ways to which an Englishman may be accus- 
tomed, yet it would be the sorriest cant to speak 
of Germany as irreligious on that account. Less- 
ing said he "always found the best Christians 
among the people who knew least about theo- 
logy " ; and those who most intimately know 
the nation of whom Lessing wrote will under- 
stand best what he meant. The stay-at-home 
Englishman is apt to confuse religion with 
churchgoing, and, setting up that convenient 
test, he concludes that he has reason both to be 
satisfied with himself and to justify a censorious 
criticism of other nations. But the test is en- 
tirely arbitrary and fallacious. The scrupulously 
regular churchgoer is not less common in Ger- 
many than in England ; but, on the other hand, 
you will meet an abundance of the most excel- 
lent people, of pure and faultless life, even of 
deeply religious character, who very rarely go to 
church, and who would rather be sentenced to 
prison than to live through a Sunday as the 
Englishman knows and loves it. The explana- 
tion is, that what I may call the method of re- 
ligion is, not the same in the two countries, and 
the most striking difference consists in the 
greater subjectivity of religion in England. In 
Germany, religion is a matter more of the intel- 
lect than the heart ; hence it is less regarded as 



Religious Life and Thought 159 

a personal matter, and the religious instinct is 
far less egoistic. The Englishman professes 
religion more, yet without being more really 
religious. Above all, he treats religion with a 
freedom and a familiarity which shock the Ger- 
man of good taste. To the latter, religion is 
surrounded by more mystery and more dignity ; 
it never becomes a commonplace thing ; rather 
it is viewed as something distant, outside and 
above him ; it is a sacred table of the law, to be 
enshrined in a suitable casing of formality and 
solemnity, and not to be dragged profanely into 
the ordinary haunts of life. As a German friend 
who knew England well once put it : "We 
decorously keep our religion always on the 
shelf ; you take yours down every day, and 
handle it without respect." 

It is remarkable, too, that this jealousy for the 
" dignity " of religion may characterise the free- 
thinker quite as much as the normal believer. 
I remember how on one occasion a doctor of 
my acquaintance, an avowed and cheery ag- 
nostic, who would have resented any pretension 
on the part of Church and clergy to concern 
themselves in the slightest degree for the wel- 
fare of his soul, protested furiously in the hear- 
ing of an amazed circle, familiar with his attitude 
towards religion, against the dramatic repre- 
sentation of the Gospel story at Oberammer- 
gau. It was indecorous, profane, blasphemous ; 



i6o German Life 

religion should not be parodied in any such way ; 
it was a scandal to the Church ; the law should 
sternly prohibit such unseemly occurrences. 
And yet the man whose feelings were thus 
most painfully outraged by a spectacle which 
to the majority of religious minds appeals with 
the profoundest force, prided himself on his 
complete emancipation from ecclesiastical tradi- 
tions, and was wont to sum up his religion in 
the old German proverb, " Thue recht und 
scheue Niemand ! " ("Do right and fear no- 
body ! " ) It was one of many instances of 
unconscious self-revelation which convinced me 
that behind the cultured German's airy profes- 
sion of scepticism there is generally a spirit 
of profound reverence for religious things — a 
reverence which here no doubt missed its aim — 
and often a genuine religious feeling and temper. 
The characteristic German method of religion 
— objectivity — I never knew better expressed 
than by the way in which the public news- 
papers treat religious questions when occasion 
requires them to touch a theme so outside 
their habitual cogitations. The principal Church 
festivals of the year — Christmas, Good Friday, 
Whitsuntide, the Commemoration of the Dead, 
and Penance Day — are seldom passed over, 
even by the most secular of daily journals, 
without discussion, in thoughtful editorial arti- 
cles, of the religious suggestiveness of the 



Religious Life and Thought i6i 

seasons. And the odd feature of these religious 
essays is the singular detachment of the writers. 
Christianity is gravely considered as an institu- 
tion but newly discovered, which it is the edi- 
torial duty to make known to the world with 
all due formality, and its leading doctrines are 
exhaustively explained and criticised as though 
nobody had ever heard of them before. The 
following passage is taken as an illustration 
from the principal Berlin Radical journal. It 
sounds crude and pedagogic, and yet it would 
read strangely in the editorial columns of an Eng- 
lish — still more of a French — newspaper given 
to fighting rough political battles all the year 
round : 

"The content of the teaching of Jesus, as 
historical investigation has recovered it from 
the distorting accretions of time, was the com- 
mand to love God with undivided heart, and 
to do self-sacrificing service for one's brethren. 
Those who fulfilled these commands were given 
the prospect of bliss, of the complete realisation 
of their wishes, and of redemption from all evil. 
Jesus offered Himself as the helper ordained of 
God to proclaim God to men, and to guide them 
to Him. He offered His life in order by that 
sacrifice to ensure to all the forgiveness of sins." 

A passage like this (and it is not singular), 
characterised by such refreshing naivete of 
thought and expression, is at bottom very 



1 62 German Life 

significant of the tone of educated German opin- 
ion. Christianity is less a personal matter bearing 
upon life and conduct — for rules of conduct the 
educated German will go to ethical philosophy 
— than a profoundly interesting chapter in the 
history of civilisation, to be studied with entire 
absence of mental bias, and expounded in 
laboured treatises, like any other subject of 
human investigation. 

The religious instinct, I have said, is less 
egoistic in Germany than in England, and it 
should not be difficult for English people to ap- 
preciate this difference, for it is strikingly char- 
acteristic of the religious systems prevalent in 
their midst, and is especially seen in the contrast 
presented by the Anglican and Nonconformist 
Churches. It is just the difference, in fact, be- 
tween the emphasising of reason and of feeling 
in religious life, between the austere reserve 
which the former imposes and the indiscrimin- 
ate retailing of the emotions which is asso- 
ciated with the more popular expressions of 
religion. Nothing could better illustrate this 
deep-seated diversity than a comparison of the 
hymns used in public worship. The German 
Kirchenlieder contain none of that painful self- 
analysis, that morbid introspection, that empty- 
ing out for public gaze of the longings and 
strivings of the soul, for what they are worth, — 
in a word, that perpetual assertion of self, in a 



Religious Life and Thought 163 

spirit so humble in appearance, yet so vain and 
often vainglorious in reality, which is prominent 
in English hymns of a certain order. " All great 
art is praise," says John Ruskin ; and may not 
the same be said of true religion ? Certainly 
the ancient chorals — most of them over two 
centuries old, and hardly any less than one — 
which are sung in the churches of Germany 
would seem to have been written with that idea 
in mind. Many of these likewise express the 
varying moods of spiritual experience, yet with- 
out spurious self-abasement on the one hand, or 
indecorous self-exaltation on the other, but the 
dominant note is that of praise. The music to 
which these hymns are sung must be heard in 
its native atmosphere in order to be properly ap- 
preciated. Here the place and the personal ele- 
ment are everything, — the plain and sombre, yet 
impressive, architecture of the church, solid and 
stable, like the German character itself ; the 
simple yet solemn liturgy, studiously free from 
ornate accompaniment ; the mass of worship- 
pers, singing in unison, their strong and mascul- 
ine utterance wedded to the rich and dignified 
harmonies of Martin Luther or Johann Criiger ; 
all this in the traditional way, sanctioned and 
hallowed by centuries of unchanging usage. 
The fastidious ear may fancy that it discovers in 
German church - singing something bald and 
crude; but it may be questioned whether any 



1 64 German Life 

religious spectacle is finer and more impressive 
in its way than that of a huge congregation of 
men, women, and children, packed from porch 
to chancel, and then tier above tier from floor to 
rafters, break out with one accord, at organ 
signal, into the measured cadence of some old 
Reformation choral. 

Ungrudging tribute must also be paid to the 
sturdiness and resoluteness of the Protestantism 
which is found in the State Churches of Lutheran 
Germany. There, at any rate, the principles of 
the Reformation enjoy all the old respect, rever- 
ence, and loyal attachment. There it never oc- 
curs to a Protestant to inquire how far the 
doctrine and ritual of his Church may be modi- 
fied in the direction of pre-Reformation obscur- 
antism without forfeit of title to the Protestant 
name, much less to resent that name as fallacious 
and ignoble. The Protestant State Churches of 
Germany remain, for all practical purposes, just 
as Luther left them after he had set the national 
religion in order, — a mighty organised protest 
against Rome. It is a remarkable fact, signifi- 
cant of the strength of Protestant sentiment, 
that although the Roman Catholics form so large 
a section of the population, and although the 
State has for this reason been compelled, as a 
matter of political expediency, to adopt the 
principle of the co-endowment of the two con- 
fessions, the word "compromise" has no place in 



Religious Life and Thought 165 

the Evangelical vocabulary. Protestantism is 
Protestantism, and Catholicism is Catholicism : 
so it seems to the clear-thinking German mind, 
which here neither temporises nor argues, but 
holds fast to the ancient ways. 

The rationalism which is met with in Ger- 
many would be far more difficult to account for 
were it isolated in appearance and confined within 
certain narrow limits. As it is so strong a char- 
acteristic of German thought, and is, in different 
degrees and forms, common to all classes, there 
must be causes which operate generally and 
point to one identical origin. It should, how- 
ever, be borne in mind that all rationalism is not 
rank unbehef ; and to confuse the two things, 
as is often done, is both misleading and unjust. 
Probably the strongest predisposing cause of the 
sceptical tendency of the German mind is its great 
and almost exaggerated love of speculation and 
criticism, its eagerness of inquiry, its passion for 
interrogation. "We Germans are an intensely 
critical people," said Prince Bismarck to me once 
in a conversation on political questions; "we 
always find something to find fault with, some- 
thing that might be done better." But this truly 
Hellenic fondness for criticism and analysis — a 
proof of the method and orderliness, as well as 
the acumen and curiosity of the German mind — 
extends not only to politics : it operates in every 
direction of thought ; and if religion has been 



1 66 German Life 

specially chosen to bear the dry light of reason, 
the explanation is simply that it offers infinitely 
more scope for criticism and speculation than any 
other subject of human investigation. If anyone 
is sceptical as to the effect of this hypercritical 
attitude towards religion, let him refer to the 
labels that German rationalists attach to them- 
selves in the census returns, which require 
specific information as to a man's beliefs or dis- 
beliefs. There he will find mention of Ration- 
alists, Materialists, Naturalists, Humanists, 
Atheists, Deists, Free-Thinkers, Monotheists, 
Pure Reasoners, Pantheists, Secularists, Theo- 
sophists, Mystics, and Cogitants, not to speak of 
people who claim to have their " Own religion." 
How many of these classifications would be dis- 
covered by an English enumeration of the peo- 
ple, did it take cognisance of their religion.? 
Then, too, the widespread rejection of the cur- 
rent formularies of the Christian religion is also 
due to hyper-culture, which almost inevitably 
creates a conscious or unconscious predilection 
for the religious ideals of classical antiquity. 
Arnold Runge professed to the close of his life to 
deplore that Christian doctrine and Christian 
ideals had dethroned the mythology of the old 
Germans, and he deliberately avowed the con- 
viction that German culture had as a consequence 
been thrown back a millennium and a half. The 
calculation is perhaps rather too exact to suggest 



Religious Life and Thought 167 

that reasoned justifications of so startling a pro- 
position were attempted, butRunge's attitude it- 
self is far from being rare even to-day. The 
Greek temper has thoroughly pervaded the Ger- 
man spirit, and has done much to mould German 
culture and character. The tendency begins in 
the Gymnasium, the tone of which may be dis- 
tinctly moral but is seldom religious. It was 
not without reason that the Emperor William II. 
complained at the outset of his reign that the 
higher schools of the land "were not turning out 
Germans, but Greeks and Romans, and though 
the head and foot of their offence in the Em- 
peror's eyes lay in the wrong national and politi- 
cal bias given, the same objection holds good in 
regard to the mental habit encouraged in those 
schools in the sphere of religious belief. The 
influences which surround the young gymnasi- 
asts are pretty certain to be more or less ration- 
alistic ; and when one thinks how strong is the 
attachment which usually binds together the 
German teacher and his pupils, it is not hard to 
understand that the latter readily imbibe their 
tutor's convictions and prejudices. 

That rationalism is rife at the universities will 
be expected, nor could it well be otherwise when 
the dominant note of German theology of the 
past fifty years is remembered. Names like 
Strauss, Baur, Ritschl, and Hase are sufficient to 
denote the revolutionary character of modern 



1 68 German Life 

theological criticism, and though at present we 
may seem to be in the current of a reaction 
against the too daring speculation and generalisa- 
tion of the past, the work of these men, and of 
others like them, has borne its natural fruit. One 
of the best known of German scholars, who 
adorns an influential chair at a distinguished 
university — his name it would for obvious rea- 
sons be improper to mention — assured me that 
his known religious orthodoxy had proved a 
source of serious offence to many of his col- 
leagues, who had made it an obstacle in the way 
of his ascent in academic office. Orthodoxy in a 
theologian might be tolerated, but in the occu- 
pant of any other chair it was regarded as a mark 
of weakness. In the Church itself the same 
spirit is to some extent found. In many pulpits 
of the State Church orthodox Christian doctrine 
gives place to simple ethical homily, though it 
may be questioned whether this is any less to 
the taste of the hearers. An educated free- 
thinker had been induced to go and hear a pop- 
ular, yet at the same time orthodox, Berlin 
clergyman of great influence. "How did you 
like him.?" was asked, when the novel experi- 
ence was over. "Well enough ; but he cannot 
be a believer." "And why.?" "Because the 
church was full." That was a few years ago, 
and religious observance in Berlin has become a 
much more serious thing in the interval, yet the 



Religious Life and Thought 169 

incident illustrates the tradition which has grown 
up — fostered by the rationalistic movement — 
that culture and orthodoxy must somehow be 
antagonistic. No doubt the rationalism of the 
pulpit would find more frequent expression did 
not the Ministries of Public Worship and the 
Consistories between them rule both Church and 
clergy with a strong hand. Overt heterodoxy 
in the clerical office is viewed with grave dis- 
pleasure, and the pastor who is guilty of it runs 
the risk of deprivation. Nowadays the principal 
bone of contention in ecclesiastical circles is the 
Apostles' Creed. No small part of the clergy 
would either abolish the Creed from the liturgy 
or make its use optional. The liberal movement 
has been strengthened by the action of Professor 
Harnack, of the Berlin University, who shocked 
the orthodox party a few years ago by openly 
questioning certain dogmas of the Creed. His 
conduct was brought to the attention of the Prus- 
sian Minister of Public Worship by a host of 
ecclesiastical consistories, councils, and synods, 
as well as by Conservative party conferences, and 
that official was implored to consider seriously 
whether the legitimate bounds of academic liberty 
had not been transgressed. Had the orthodox 
party had their way, the offending professor and 
all his sympathisers would have been removed 
from their offices, but the Minister appealed to 
declined to respond to the charitable challenge. 



170 German Life 

It is often made a reproach to the Protestant 
Church, as an organ of Christian doctrine, that 
the attacks which it has had to bear, and the 
dangers to which it has been exposed have 
come from within rather than from without. 
This cannot be denied, and it is impossible that 
it should be otherwise. Of necessity, an ecclesi- 
astical organisation establfshed to express the 
Protestant conceptions of religion must accept 
the risks along with the advantages of the Pro- 
testant position, and one of these risks is the 
spirit of free and unfettered inquiry, with the 
consequences, good or ill, to which it may lead. 
The Roman Catholic Church owes its strength 
and stability largely to two things, — to the pres- 
sure which it claims to exert upon its adherents 
in the matter of belief and to its machinery for 
giving effect to this pressure. Its teachings are 
declared to be infallible ; therefore no opposition, 
no argument, no appeal can be possible. The 
work of the believer is half, three-quarters, done 
for him, and it is his business simply to ratify, 
by silent and unquestioning assent, the inflexible 
fiat of his Church as represented by his spiritual 
superiors. Each functionary in this wonderful 
hierarchy is within his province omnipotent. 
Above all stands the Pope, who, speaking ex 
cathedrd, utters the words of inviolable truth, 
against which there can be no appeal. The 
bishops come next, receiving their authority and 



Religious Life and Thought 171 

command direct from the pontiff, rendering to 
him absolute obedience, yet in their turn speak- 
ing with the voice of law to their priests, and 
obeyed by these with the same unquestioning 
fidelity. Finally, the priest occupies amongst 
his flock a position as authoritative in its way as 
is that of the bishop above him.' Such a ma- 
chinery is perfect enough for the work it is 
intended to do, but that work is notoriously 
dissimilar from the task which a Protestant 
Church system sets itself. There have been few 

' Videihe. Times, August, 1900: "Cardinal Vaughan on 
Criticism of the Holy See. — The annual conference of the 
Roman Catholic Young Men's Societies of Great Britain is be- 
ing held this week at Chester. Cardinal Vaughan, writing to 
apologise for his absence, said : ' These are days in which 
loyalty to the Church should be the keynote of every associa- 
tion of Catholic laymen. This loyalty is often put to the test 
by the intellectual pride and licence of thought and criticism 
which characterise modern society in England. There are 
Catholics who permit themselves to read and discuss whatever 
is printed, if only it falls under their notice and is written in an 
attractive style. In their presumption and ignorance, without 
careful intellectual training and without any necessity, they 
seem to deem themselves a match against the most subtle argu- 
ments and the false presentation, or half-presentation, of facts 
which they have never mastered or even heard of. They 
criticise the conduct of the Holy See as though they had a 
mission to rescue the government of the Church from failure. 
These public criticisms and attacks upon the Church by child- 
ren professing to belong to her are proofs of an uncatholic and 
disloyal spirit. . . . The shepherds are over the sheep, and 
not the sheep and lambs over the shepherds.' " 



172 German Life 

periods in its history wlien Protestantism has 
failed to recognise that its best chance of effect- 
ively competing with the hard and fast regime 
of Catholicism is by emphasising its opposite, — 
the easy yoke of voluntary acquiescence. The 
Catholic Church might truthfully claim, were it 
disposed, that it alone of great religious organi- 
sations is able to secure uniformity of doctrine 
and belief. But the a-nswer of the Protestant 
Church would be that such uniformity is neither 
its end nor its ideal, and in no country can this 
be less the case than in Germany, the classic 
land of metaphysical speculation and unfettered 
scientific investigation. Granted that the Pro- 
testant Church of Germany may with justification 
be accused of latitudinarianism ; yet the obvious 
reason is that liberty is to it a vital atmosphere. 
Let free thought and inquiry cease in its midst, 
and both the dignity and the historical meaning 
of Protestantism will disappear. 

It is, however, amongst the working classes 
of the towns that rationalism is found in its 
crassest forms. Here it is not merely a matter 
of reservation on this point of faith and individ- 
ual interpretation on that, but of outspoken 
infidelity and materialism. Thanks to the per- 
sistent agitation of Social Democracy, which has 
been encouraged by the political and social 
conditions which environ the lives of the masses, 
and by the past unsympathetic attitude of both 



Religious Life and Thought i73 

the Church and the cultured classes towards 
labour, the urban work-people of Germany have 
in a body transformed themselves into a resolute 
and uncompromising party pledged to the sub- 
version, if may be, of the existing economic, 
political, and religious systems. His Socialism 
is the true religion of the average German work- 
ing-man, and Socialism involves for him not 
merely the advocacy of a new industrial order, 
but the practical rejection of all theistic belief. 
A Court of Industry which had been formed in 
Barmen of twelve employers and the same 
number of work-people, for the investigation of 
labour disputes, was being sworn, when seven 
of the work-people declined to take the oath 
on the ground that "They were atheists, and 
could not say, ' So help me God ! ' " They agreed 
ultimately to repeat the usual formula, but only 
on the understanding that their action signified 
merely a mechanical asseveration of good faith 
in the discharge of their duty. On this subject 
of Socialism and irreligion, I cannot do better 
than repeat a few words which I wrote some 
years ago, for they need no modification. "It 
is not in the domain of economic doctrine that 
the influence of Social Democracy upon the 
working classes of Germany has been most 
baneful. Economic theories and beliefs, while 
they must more or less find expression in a 
man's views of the world, and especially of 



174 German Life 

social relationships and institutions, do not ne- 
cessarily toucli the deepest springs of life and 
character. Where Social Democracy has done 
most harm is in giving to the labouring classes 
an estimate of life and of religion which cripples 
morality, and may make it well-nigh an impos- 
sibility. Its science is taken from Buchner, 
Hackel, and Darwin ; its philosophy from Scho- 
penhauer, Feuerbach, and Hartmann ; and so 
far as theology is regarded at all, it is seen 
through the media of Strauss, Bruno Bauer, and 
Renan. Into a crucible of imperfect knowledge 
and dishonest synthesis these unpromising, and 
in unskilled hands dangerous, elements have 
been placed, and the product has been a ration- 
alism of the crudest, nay, grossest character. 
That Social Democracy should be hostile to the 
Church is explicable enough, if lamentable ; and 
if the leaders of Socialism had stopped at denunci- 
ations of ecclesiastical expressions of Christian- 
ity, their action would not have been beyond 
remedy. What has been done, however, is to 
take away from a large part of the working 
classes all respect for religion, all supernatural 
faith, all recognition of supreme and objective 
ethical laws. The Socialist Congress of Erfurt 
did, indeed, affirm the maxim that ' Truth, jus- 
tice, and morality should be recognised as the 
guiding principles of all members, both towards 
one another and towards all humanity, without 



Religious Life and Thought 175 

regard to race, religion, or nationality.' But 
whether truth, justice, and morality will flourish 
on atheistic soil remains to be demonstrated. 
The experiment is being tried, and it is a haz- 
ardous one." 

It will not be amiss to refer here to a subject 
which, in the opinion of many of the most 
thoughtful Germans, has a close connexion with 
religion, and which, in any event, is a part of the 
broader question of morality. I refer to the old 
problem of the frequency of suicide in the king- 
dom of Saxony. The problem has attracted close 
attention for many years, yet, unfortunately, 
without any very satisfactory conclusions being 
arrived at, for almost the only result of investi- 
gation is to discover the difficulties which beset 
any attempt to fathom the mystery. It is a 
notorious fact that in Saxony the suicidal mania 
is far commoner than in any other part of 
Europe, and the most various speculations have 
been advanced as to the explanation of this 
unenviable circumstance. Some scientific in- 
quirers have ascribed it to peculiarities of national 
character, connected with the blending of Wend- 
ish with German elements, and especially to the 
tendency to extinction which appears to be 
strong in the Wendish blood, which tendency 
takes the active form of self-extermination. 
Other explanations which have been suggested 
are : (i) The military system, (2) the modern 



176 German Life 

economic stress and strain, (3) poverty, and (4) 
materialistic views of life. As to the first, how- 
ever, Saxony does not occupy a peculiar posi- 
tion ; and if universal military service were 
directly responsible for its abnormal number of 
suicides, the other German States should have 
the same reputation, which is not the case ; 
while, on the other hand, it is a proved fact that 
suicide in the army is declining. The second 
and third factors seem more probable, though 
here, again, it is to be noted that while the ma- 
terial condition of the masses on the whole is 
decidedly improving, though still poor enough, 
suicide is on the increase. Moreover, there is 
as dire poverty out of Saxony as in that State : 
nowhere is there more than in the Polish dis- 
tricts of Prussia and the rural districts of North 
Germany generally, where suicide is ii^t an 
obvious consequence. Further, it must be noted 
that it is not overwhelmingly the poor who thus 
seek oblivion, for nearly every class of society 
contributes its share to this doleful death-list. 
The final cause advanced — the prevalence of 
materialistic beliefs, tending, as these do, to the 
depreciation of human life — has undoubtedly 
a great influence, though it is questionable whe- 
ther Saxony is in reality more irreligious than 
the rest of the Empire, A Saxon physician of 
eminence came to the conclusion that the sui- 
cidal tendency might be attributed to a "certain 



Religious Life and Thought 177 

excitable sense of honour in tiie character of the 
people, and to their unhealthy advanced culture ; 
but it shows quite clearly that the possession of 
the pure Evangelical teaching does not preserve 
our people from moral aberration." 

Probably the explanation last suggested con- 
tains, on the whole, the strongest elements of 
probability. Yet it seems to me that there are 
still other influences to which sufficient weight 
has not hitherto been attached. They are the 
nervous, highly strung temperament, the vein 
of sentimentality and romance, and the impuls- 
iveness which are present in so marked a de- 
gree in the German character, though to these 
must be added a sensitiveness of personal hon- 
our which is apt, often on quite trivial grounds, 
to place death before actual or apprehended dis- 
gra(;^^.. A German will see romance in suicide, 
where a cooler-blooded Englishman will see only 
dismal tragedy, and the former will rush to his 
end while the latter is systematically arguing out 
the question, "To be, or not to be?" debating 
it from all sides, and asking himself whether so 
extreme and irretrievable a step is really worth 
while. Extraordinary mediate causes of suicide 
occur in both countries, but Germany, in this 
respect, has the uniquer record of the two. Some 
years ago there was exhibited in a Berlin Art 
Exhibition a strange painting bearing the title, 
"Tired of Life" {Die Lebensmuden) , — a picture 



178 German Life 

which could hardly have been produced by any 
but a German artist. Two figures — a youth and 
a maiden — bound fast together by rope, were 
shown in the act of throwing themselves from a 
jetty into a lake. The scene was depicted with 
complete realism and exactness, — the expression 
upon the faces reflected the emotions which the 
occasion would suggest ; the attitude of the 
lovers was severely "naturalistic"; the very 
water seemed to be consciously anticipating its 
prey. To the ordinary healthy, non-German 
mind, the picture, as a picture, suggested the 
ludicrous ; for whatever pathos it might other- 
wise have suggested was effectively destroyed 
by the fact that the girl's hat was a con- 
spicuous triumph of the milliner's art, and the 
rope prosaically new. One might seriously philo- 
sophise upon the artistic mood which had sent 
the painter to so strange a motive, but the pict- 
ure itself, to an Englishman, seemed grotesque. 
Yet, before this canvas crowds of people — for 
the most part of impressionable years — stood 
every day, from morning till evening, as long as 
the exhibition was open. The Berlin Press de- 
voted endless columns of description and moral- 
lising to it, and it was for a time the fashionable 
theme of conversation. Not only so, but the 
imagination of the painter was shortly afterwards 
translated into actual fact, for the very tragedy 
which he depicted was enacted in a neighbouring 



Religious Life and Thought 179 

lake, and the same thing has occurred more 
than once since then. 

How strongly impulse and the sense of hon- 
our together act in disposing to suicide may be 
judged by the fact that of a year's deaths of 
women in Prussia from this cause, over thirteen 
per cent, were certified as having been due to 
remorse, shame, and fear of punishment. That 
premature death is largely resorted to owing to 
discontent, morbidness, and pessimism is shown 
by the fact that of a year's suicides amongst men 
in Prussia, fourteen per cent, were declared to 
be due to "general weariness of life," and this 
did not take account of the far larger number 
due to want, lack of employment, and similar 
rational causes. It is noticeable that the greatest 
number of suicides takes place at an age in which 
the victims have had opportunity of tasting life, 
and of finding it either good or bad. An analy- 
sis of the suicides in Saxony during many years 
showed that 0.9 per cent, fell to the age of 14 
years and under ; 10.2 per cent, to 14-21 years ; 
15.3 per cent, to 21-30 years ; 34.9 per cent, to 
30-50 years ; 31.6 per cent, to 50-70 years ; 5.4 
per cent, to 70 years and over ; the remaining 
1.7 per cent, being of unknown age. If pub- 
lished statistics are any guide, the number of 
German suicides which could not, by any ex- 
aggeration of terms, or any rational use of 
evidence, be attributed to mental aberration is 



i8o German Life 

particularly large. In England, we know, coron- 
ers' juries are specially empanelled to declare 
every suicide to be the result of " temporary in- 
sanity," the healthy and convenient view pre- 
vailing that nobody in his senses would take his 
own life, — an assumption which, from one point 
of view, is probably correct enough. In Ger- 
many the motive of suicide is not so lightly set- 
tled. If possible, a reason is discovered and 
assigned, of course on circumstantial evidence, 
and in the official statistics the acknowledged 
cases of mental disturbance (or " disease," as the 
legal form goes) bear but a small proportion to 
the whole. No considerations of false delicacy 
prevent suicide from being openly attributed to 
drunkenness, or vice, or shame, when facts 
point to such a conclusion. 

Attempts have often been made to establish 
comparisons and contrasts between the different 
States in point of morality, criminality, and the 
like, from the standpoint of religious confession; 
but it has proved a difficult and, indeed, an un- 
profitable task. As between the Protestant and 
Roman Catholic sections of the community it 
has been pointed out that while the numerical 
ratio is roughly two to one, there are consider- 
ably more convictions for criminal offences 
amongst the Catholics than the Protestants. But 
it would be futile and unfair to draw from this 
bald fact any general moral conclusion in favour 



Religious Life and Thought i8i 

of one Church to the disfavour of the other. 
The simple truth is that the principal zone of 
criminality in Germany happens to be cotermin- 
ous with those portions of the country — the 
east and north-east of Prussia, as well as a por- 
tion of Bavaria — in which the population, while 
overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, is at the same 
time relatively low in the intellectual and social 
scale. To show how misleading any such com- 
parative figures would be, it is only necessary to 
mention the fact that there are isolated portions 
of Protestant Germany which rival the most 
criminal districts of Catholicism, and, conversely, 
Catholic districts which rank with the most law- 
abiding spheres of Protestant influence. To 
draw any such religious comparison would be to 
ascribe to ecclesiastical differences characteristics 
which are in reality the result of racial and social 
moments. 




CHAPTER VIII 

WOMAN AND THE HOME 

IN a country where public life is capable of so 
much further development, and where civil 
and political franchises and functions which in 
other lands have come to be regarded as the 
rights of the common citizen are so grudgingly 
bestowed upon men of even the highest intelli- 
gence, it is no wonder that the position of 
women is not an ideal one. Germany has, 
however, a woman's question and a woman's 
movement, and the progress which they have 
made during recent years is noteworthy, con- 
sidering the prejudices and practical difficulties 
which have had to be confronted and overcome 
at every step of the way. If anything could 
convince the sceptical that the German woman 
stands not where she did, it will be the fact that 
within the past year there has been established 
in Berlin a successful Women's Club, open to 
aristocratic members, of whom six hundred are 
solemnly pledged to meet for discussion and 
182 



Woman and the Home 183 

social intercourse once a week; and, nevertlie- 
less, there are those who doubt that the world 
moves. 

Times have changed, and with them modes 
of thought, since a famous German educationist 
long ago justified the higher education of wo- 
men on the ground that "A German husband 
ought not to be bored by the intellectual short- 
sightedness and narrowness of the wife at his 
domestic hearth." Nowadays the case for wo- 
men's higher education is supported by stronger 
and higher reasons, and chiefly by the fact, 
which no longer has to plead for recognition, 
that " woman is not undeveloped man, but 
diverse," and so has a life of her own to live, an 
individuality of her own to cultivate, and, if 
may be, to realise. From this discovery has 
proceeded the woman's movement everywhere. 
Yet Germany is better off than most countries, 
in that it has long been in possession of abund- 
ant and excellent facilities for the higher educa- 
tion of its girls. It is one of the most beneficial 
results of the hard-and-fast German principle of 
placing all schools — even those in private hands 
— under direct State control, that a high standard 
is universal, and the education which girls of 
the middle and higher middle class may obtain, 
even in small provincial towns, is both liberal 
and inexpensive. The idea of sending girls of 
this class into life with a so-called education 



1 84 German Life 

which scarcely outdistances the restricted instruc- 
tion of second-rate urban elementary schools — 
an education in which mathematics stands merely 
for arithmetic, English for the geography and a 
smattering of the history of a single country and 
the bare proprieties of grammar, and the study 
of languages for a questionable capacity to turn 
bad English into worse French — would fill the 
instructress of a German "higher daughters' 
school " with unspeakable horror. She would 
see to it — or the State in her stead, were she by 
any possibility indifferent — that her girls thor- 
oughly mastered the political and literary history 
of their own country and the outlines, at least, 
of European history and literature as well ; that 
they were versed in Greek and Roman as well as 
Scandinavian mythology ; that French and Eng- 
lish were understood and spoken almost as 
mother-tongues, — for the Germans in general are 
heaven-born linguists, — and that algebra and 
Euclid were studied as systematically as in 
English grammar schools with a mathematical 
leaning. 

When German girls from the middle class up- 
ward leave school it is, in fact, with a breadth 
of culture which would astonish those who are 
satisfied with the definition of that much-abused 
word "education" which passes current unre- 
buked in England. In later life, comparing rank 
with rank, it may be questioned whether the 



Woman and the Home 185 

German woman is not on the whole better in- 
formed and better read than the man, though 
the latter's mental equipment may bear more 
visible traces of the formal school grinding which 
has been undergone. He will never forget his 
Latin and Greek, — so thoroughly are they drilled 
into him from the Sexta of his Gymnasium up- 
ward, — but he is one-sided, and the distractions 
and disturbances of practical life not seldom put 
a period to his further mental development. 
The German girl, who in the course of time takes 
upon herself domestic responsibilities, first in 
her parents' home, and later in one of her own, 
has also to contend with influences which are in 
general opposed to zeal for study ; but all the 
spare moments she has are devoted to books. 
To these she instinctively flies in her leisure, 
just as the man resorts to his newspaper ; and 
in her case there are special compensating cir- 
cumstances which encourage the studious temp- 
erament. The very detachment from public 
life and concerns which training and convention- 
ality have imposed upon German women, while 
it unquestionably narrows their range of thought, 
has the effect of throwing them upon their own 
resources, and so it happens that what they lose 
in knowledge of the world and in wider human 
interests they gain in the cultivation of intellectual 
and, still more, of sesthetic tastes, in the posses- 
sion and enjoyment of a quieter outlook on life 



1 86 German Life 

and a happier feeling of contentment with their 
lot. For the German woman is neither restless 
nor ambitious, or, at least, her one ambition is 
to see the household over which she rules orderly, 
harmonious, and attactive to those for whom 
it exists. But this does not mean that she is of 
necessity a sort of domestic drudge. The idea 
most frequently .associated amongst English folk 
with the German Hausfrau is an absolute tra- 
vesty of the reality ; for the picture which the 
word calls to the mind of the average person is 
that of a middle-aged matron, dowdily dressed, 
busying about between kitchen and dining-room, 
with a bunch of keys at her waist and the odour 
of dried herbs clinging to her vestments. The 
picture is altogether imaginary, and having served 
its day and generation faithfully it might well 
be discarded, with some other curious fictions 
about the German household, — as that sausage 
is the staple food of the rich and Sauerkraut of 
the poor. 

It is true that the German housewife does her 
full share of the domestic tasks — and sometimes 
a little more — and justly prides herself on the 
fact that her knowledge of the ins and outs of 
the menage extends to the slightest detail, and 
that every single punctilio of household duty is 
regulated by herself. But this is only one, and 
the most commonplace, expression of the per- 
sonal virtues which are behind, and which make 



Woman and the Home 187 

up her character, — industry, thorough-goingness, 
fidelity, and, above all, a truly religious apprecia- 
tion of and devotion to the responsibilities and 
sanctities of home life and home government. 
Not only so, but the German Hausfrau is an 
illustration of the perfect compatibility of the 
most admirable domestic Tilchtigheit (which 
means thoroughness and efficiency combined) 
with intellectual tastes and accomplishments, 
which latter are not less real because no wider 
sphere for their display is sought than the limited 
circle of home companionships. The idea that 
the "homeliness" which is so generally and so 
truly attributed to her implies the quintessence 
of domesticity is a ludicrous fallacy. The history 
of German letters, German science, German art, 
is full of shining examples of wives and mothers 
who, without making noise or parade in the 
world, without, indeed, being heard of outside 
their own homes and social circles, have, in their 
own quiet way, played a powerful part as her- 
alds of culture and progress. The life of the 
heroic widow of Jakob Andrea, the famous theo- 
logian, will never cease to point its inspiring 
moral. She was left penniless with a young 
family to provide for as best she might. Sym- 
pathising friends advised her not to quarrel with 
fate, but to make up her mind at once to bring 
up her children in a lowly sphere of life, — her 
boys as artisans, and her girls as useful money- 



1 88 German Life 

earners of any kind. Calling her lads together, 
she tore off her widow's veil in their sight, as 
she said : " Even though I should have to sell 
this veil, I will educate you in your father's 
place ; I will work for you, and starve for you, 
if only you are true," She did it, and German 
theology gained a still greater Andrea in the son 
Johann Valentin, who rose high in the Lutheran 
Church. Such Hausfrauen German households 
have never lacked, — women who have cultivated 
a serene ideal of family life, who have not 
grudged the undivided bestowal of their gifts 
upon the right training of their sons and daugh- 
ters, and who have never been impatient to 
share the wider concerns and less tranquil ambi- 
tions of men, so long as their own supremacy 
in the home was undisputed. 

Nevertheless, it would be idle to pretend that 
German women are in general willing to fall in 
with the lot which contented their mothers and 
grandmothers ; and the problem which exercises 
the minds of the advocates of emancipation, is 
how to secure to them a legitimate place and influ- 
ence outside the home without any sacrifice of 
the high national ideal of home and of woman's 
position in it. Where women have suffered 
hitherto is in the refusal to them of proper scope 
for the exercise of their capacities. They might 
be educated to the highest pitch, but they have 
been tolerated in few of the spheres which men 



Woman and the Home 189 

have immemorially set apart for the special play 
of their own activities. It is probable that the 
average male would rub his eyes in surprise 
were he asked to believe that the position of his 
wife and sisters is not in every respect what Di- 
vine Providence intended it to be. In his view, 
the home is the stage upon which women 
should play the mild drama of her life, and out 
of the home she is out of her true province. In 
the words of the proverb, "The house is wo- 
man's world, the world is man's house." Yet 
to suggest that there is any such thing as a con- 
scious repression of woman would be absurd. 
Marriage may often fall short of an ideal com- 
panionship, as elsewhere, but, so far as devotion 
and fidelity go, the German husband is as good 
as any other, if not always quite as polished and 
punctilious as he might be, and the idea that a 
system of domestic tyranny exists in Germany 
does not call for serious notice. That in some 
directions higher views of women are necessary 
in Germany it would be mere affectation to deny. 
In the country, and especially in the poorer and 
more distinctly pastoral States, women take a far 
harder share in outdoor agricultural work than is 
fair to their sex. They plough and harrow side 
by side with the men ; they dig the potatoes, as 
well as plant them ; they carry the manure afield 
in huge baskets of appalling weight; and they 
thrash the corn ; not to speak of work of a 



90 German Life 



lighter and more permissible character. In the 
towns, too, it is a common thing to see women 
drawing small carts along the streets. Some- 
times they only assist the dogs, which form the 
real team, yet frequently they bear the whole 
burden alone. The physical strain may not in 
general be exhausting, yet at best one feels that 
woman is not in her right place drawing carts, 
however diminutive, of coal or wood or fruit, 
along the public streets, where well-dressed men 
pass to and fro, conscious of a superiority to em- 
ployment so humble and degrading. 

In the educated circles of society things are 
rapidly improving. There the influences that 
make for the confinement of woman's life within 
the old narrow bounds are mainly the antiquated 
traditions and social conventionalities which both 
sexes share alike, and these are being overturned 
and broken through. Unexampled efforts are 
nowadays made to meet the intellectual needs of 
girls and young women. The higher schools 
have, as I have said, at all times been excellent, 
but these have been supplemented in some of 
the larger towns by Gymnasia, conducted on 
the lines of the best Gymnasia for boys. The 
"sweet girl graduates with their golden hair " 
have also made an appearance. The majority of 
the universities have had the enlightenment to 
open their doors to women, and, while permis- 
sion to acquire the doctor's title is rarely granted, 






Woman and the Home 191 

facilities for studying side by side with men are 
being increasingly afforded. That women ap- 
preciate the privilege thus offered is proved by 
the hearty response which they have made to it. 
The number of female students at the universities 
in the winter term of 1 899-1 900 was 644, of 
whom 406 fell to Berlin, and the rest to Breslau, 
Bonn, Gottingen, Halle, Kiel, Freiburg, Strass- 
burg, Konigsberg, Marburg, Erlangen, Tubingen, 
and Wiirzburg. Naturally, the great majority 
of the fair hearers attach themselves to the 
faculty which cultivates the widest intellectual 
interests, — that of philosophy, — while medicine 
comes next in their esteem, then law, and Berlin 
has even had a lady student of theology. 

Encouraged by this friendly movement in the 
seats of learning, women are more and more 
pushing their way in professional life. Time 
was when paid occupations were eschewed as 
declassing women of a certain social position. 
The lady author worked in secret for years be- 
fore she dare make herself known, and more 
years had yet to pass before the public extended 
to her a respectful hearing. Nowadays there is 
hardly a department of letters in which she has 
not laid claim to recognition. Not only so, but 
the authoress of to-day is a recognised power, 
for success, which condones everything and 
justifies everything, has taken all point from the 
satire and all sting from the contumely which 



192 German Life 

were formerly levelled against her. Not long 
ago, one of the well known German illustrated 
magazines offered prizes for the best three stories 
to be submitted in competition, and when the 
award of the eminent jurors was examined it 
was found that all three went to women, though 
the works compared numbered a thousand. In 
a less degree women have won distinction in the 
world of art, while in the practical calling of 
medicine they have taken a place which is 
no longer contested. Women as teachers have 
always been numerous enough. They are to 
be found not only in higher girls' schools, but in 
elementary schools, and the inducement is the 
greater because the State examination is in every 
case severe. At least half the teachers of the 
municipal higher schools for girls in Berlin are 
women, and almost the same proportion obtains 
in the elementary schools. Hospital and sick 
nursing attracts a very large and growing num- 
ber of women ; but here love of a hard and 
self-sacrificing work induces at least as much as 
the prospect of reward. Lower in the social ranks 
there is great rivalry for the positions of book- 
keeper, typist, telegraphist, and railway ticket 
clerk, but the last two offices are not, save in a 
few parts of the country, occupied largely by 
women. Another occupation to which they 
have turned their attention is that of public 
librarian, and in Berlin a special school has been 



Woman and the Home 193 

formed for their training in work of the kind. 
Less progress has been made in the State service. 
It is only recently that the Governments have 
taken kindly to the employment of women in the 
higher branches, though in Prussia, Bavaria, and 
elsewhere women are now appointed assistant 
factory inspectors, and as such are charged with 
the supervision of industries in which their sex 
is particularly engaged. 

The position and outlook of women are less 
satisfactory in public life. Philanthropy and re- 
ligion are spheres to which no restriction neces- 
sarily applies, and it is noteworthy that there are 
now between three and four thousand Women's 
Associations {Frauenvereine) pursuing benevo- 
lent, mutual improvement, and social reform 
propagandism. Participation in municipal af- 
fairs, however, is absolutely forbidden them. 
They may not vote for the election of, still less 
be members of, public bodies of any kind. Po- 
litically they are contemptuously disregarded. 
It is never certain that women will be allowed 
by the police to attend simple political gather- 
ings, for the holding of which sanction has been 
given. It continually happens that such gather- 
ings are permitted on the clear understanding that 
women and girls shall be excluded, and also that 
meetings of the kind are dissolved by the police- 
men in attendance because of the presence of 
the unenfranchised sex. In passing, it is note- 



194 German Life 

worthy that not a few women of education and 
social position are to be found amongst the 
hardest workers of the Socialist party, and they 
have taken this extreme step solely out of sym- 
pathy with the lot of the masses, and a desire 
to help towards its amelioration. 

The position of women of the manual work- 
ing classes is pretty much what would be ex- 
pected from the political disqualifications from 
which all women suffer. The opportunities 
of coalition open to them are very limited. It is 
hard enough for working-men to combine for 
the protection of mutual interests, but the diffi- 
culties in the way of such combination amongst 
women are generally insuperable, and the dis- 
covery that women have joined men's industrial 
societies has frequently led to the dissolution and 
prohibition of the latter. Even where working- 
women are permitted to unite in class associa- 
tions, the condition is strictly imposed that there 
must be no breath of politics, or the favour will 
be cancelled. An announcement of this kind is 
not uncommon in the newspapers : " The 

Women's Union of has been declared to be 

a political organisation, and has therefore been 
dissolved by the police." And why ? Most 
likely because at one of the meetings of the 
society some excitable young woman has un- 
guardedly made a remark which the jealous po- 
lice officer in attendance has construed as of a 



Woman and the Home 195 

political character ; and what is not political in 
the eyes of a suspicious policeman ? Of nearly 
fifty thousand women who earn their livelihood 
in Berlin alone by manual work, only two thou- 
sand five hundred have been organised by the 
Social Democrats, and that after long and strenu- 
ous efforts, while all the orthodox trade-unions 
in the country have not yet enrolled that number 
of female members. Largely owing to this fail- 
ure to draw women into the net of industrial 
combination, their position on the labour market 
is unquestionably a profoundly unhappy one. 
The wages they earn are miserably small, the 
conditions of their employment pay far too little 
regard to their sex and strength, and scanty earn- 
ings and unfavourable surroundings are together 
responsible in some trades for grave moral evils 
which every now and then force themselves 
upon public and parliamentary attention. 

One of the most significant new departures in 
the Socialist agitation is the extension of the 
movement amongst women of the working class, 
who now contribute a very large contingent to 
the party, and, as might be expected, belong to 
its most uncompromising section. In normal 
times they can do little beyond proclaiming the 
Socialist evangel within the circle of their ac- 
quaintance; but at election times, when the law 
is relaxed, they take a full share of agitatorial 
work, where there is no one to forbid them, by 



196 German Life 

public speaking, distributing party literature, and 
canvassing for votes. The party has now a 
special newspaper for women, called Equality, 
which is also conducted by a woman. 

What has been said is enough to show that 
the woman's question in Germany, while it has 
made large strides, has a great task before it. 
On the whole, its aims are far from being in- 
temperate. Here and there are to be found ex- 
tremists who plead not merely for equality of 
opportunity as between the sexes, but for the 
fiction of identity of condition, and who, forget- 
ful of the backward state of the men's question 
in Germany, seek to attain at one move ideals 
which are recognised as distant by the more ar- 
dent reformers in England. But, in general, the 
movement progresses within narrow limits and 
on moderate lines, and herein consists its prin- 
cipal hostage to success. 

Following woman into the home, where her 
position and power are less a matter of cavil or 
dispute, the German household economy is found 
to present many special features of interest. 
More and more the flat system is becoming uni- 
versalised, even in the country, for it has long 
been the rule in the towns. The separate house 
is the exception, and often the trim suburban 
villa which stands with an air of dignity and 
" standoffishness " in its own spacious garden 
will nowadays be found to be the home of several 



Woman and the Home 197 

families, one living above the other, by whom 
the garden and lawn are enjoyed in common. 
In the main it is a question of dear land, and con- 
sequent high rents. Every class suffers accord- 
ing to its position, but the rack-rents which are 
making the houses of urban Germany smaller 
every year, and to a large extent endangering the 
public health, fall most oppressively upon the 
small official and the working classes, who pay 
on an average from one-fifth to one-fourth of 
their scanty earnings to the landlord. In Berlin 
rents are generally estimated at so much per 
room. In the better parts of the city £,^0 per 
room is no exceptional figure, bringing the rent 
of a fair-sized house of eight rooms to ^240, 
while in the newer parts, on the periphery of 
the city, ^15 per room is enough. The small 
tradesman or small official may get a diminutive 
dwelling of four or five rooms for ^30 or £,^o\ 
but as such a rent is beyond his means, he lets 
one room to a lodger — student or clerk — and 
makes ^ i o or ^ 1 2 by the transaction. Hence it 
comes about that Berlin is literally a city of 
lodging-houses. 

Where cost, or rent, as the case may be, is 
quite secondary to the desirability of isolation, 
the self-contained house is still favoured, and 
those people are counted fortunate indeed who 
are able to live alone. But the word of the land 
speculator has gone forth, and both in small towns 



19^ German Life 

and large the flat has virtually conquered. The 
system has, however, very advantageous sides, 
and on the score of convenience most practical 
merits can be claimed for it ; but on the other 
hand, it offers less privacy and less protection 
from noise, though custom tends to encourage 
indifference to what goes on above, below, 
and on either side ; and even neighbours on 
the same story, whose front and back doors 
are not a yard asunder, can and do live to- 
gether for years without once committing 
the impropriety of speaking to each other. 
In the internal arrangements of their houses the 
Germans of the middle class are, as a rule, 
laudably simple. There is no useless profusion 
of furniture to suggest the cabinet-maker's shop. 
The furniture is accommodated to the room, not 
the room to the furniture, and every article, be- 
sides being needful, is good of its kind. Heavy 
carpets are unknown. In the centre of the floor 
there is a rug or mat, but for the rest, where 
parquet is not 'used — and it is commoner in 
houses of very moderate rent than with us in 
mansions — the floor is painted or stained, both 
in the interest of cleanliness and convenience. 
The least satisfactory part of the house is that 
allotted to the domestic servants. German 
housewives have of late years found themselves 
confronted by the selfsame servant problem 
which has agitated and distressed their fellows 



Woman and the Home 199 

in Western countries, and from the servants' 
standpoint it was high time that the perplexity 
came, for their general position is neither a happy 
nor a tolerable one. That the wages paid are 
low is a minor matter, considering the fact that 
they are higher now by a hundred per cent, than 
a decade ago. The wrongs of the domestic serv- 
ant relate rather to her treatment in the home, 
— the unsympathetic relationship between mis- 
tress and maid, the inordinate hours of work, the 
little liberty allowed, and the inferior accommo- 
dation provided. Owing largely, no doubt, to 
higher rents, the bedrooms allotted to the house- 
hold attendants are miserably small, often dark 
box-rooms at the end of a corridor, which must 
be approached by a removable ladder, or doll's- 
house-like apartments, half room, half cupboard, 
built off the kitchen wall, and just large enough 
to receive a single bed, but too low to allow of 
their occupants standing upright. But the do- 
mestic servant is up in arms, and has bidden her 
tyrants beware. There, as elsewhere, she is ac- 
quiring the dangerous knowledge that she holds 
in her hands her mistress's fate as well as her 
own. 

In the matter of heating, the Germans set 
English people a lesson both in efficiency and 
economy. The open fireplace, which seems to 
have been deliberately designed so as to produce 
a minimum of heat for a maximum expenditure 



200 German Life 

of fuel, is almost unknown in these days, though 
it was formerly common in some parts of the 
country, and particularly on the Rhine. The 
two modes of heating in vogue are the fixed 
porcelain stove and the movable iron stove. 
The latter is, however, antiquated, and though 
still largely used, it is regarded as a rude sur- 
vival, and is rapidly going out of fashion. Pro- 
jecting from one of the walls, often as far as the 
middle of the room, the iron stove generates a 
large amount of dry heat ; but it does this at 
the expense of physical comfort, appearance, 
ventilation, and thus of health. Very different 
is the porcelain stove, which is found in the 
rooms of nearly all modern German houses. It 
is a ponderous structure as a rule, and on first 
acquaintance you are inclined to vote it awk- 
ward, if not ugly. Mark Twain did not greatly 
exaggerate when, describing his first introduc- 
tion to a stove of the kind, he said that the im- 
pression made upon him was that of being in 
the august presence of a family monument. The 
comparison may stand ; for the common and 
older stove, rising four square to a height of ten 
feet, with its facing of neatly jointed white tiles, 
giving the rough idea of blocks of marble, may 
well suggest sepulchral associations. But mod- 
ern skill and taste — thanks largely to the excel- 
lent training afforded to porcelain workers in the 
numberless art-industrial schools scattered all 



Woman and the Home 201 

over the country — have done wonders in the 
improvement of the domestic stove. Plain white 
tiles give place, in the better qualities, to ma- 
jolica of the prettiest shapes and colours, and 
the family monuments which nowadays grace 
the German's drawing- and dining-rooms are 
veritable works of art and beauty. The stove 
stands in a convenient corner, and the positions 
in the various rooms are chosen with a view to 
minimising the number of chimneys needed for 
the house, or a row of houses, as it may happen. 
In the front of the stove, and about a foot from 
the floor, is a roomy cavity, in which the charge 
of fuel is placed. This consists either of bri- 
quettes, wood, or peat, — coal to a very small 
extent, and never alone, as it would generate 
too great a heat, besides being much more ex- 
pensive. The face of the cavity is covered by 
an iron door, and when the fuel has become 
thoroughly burned through — not before — it is 
hermetically closed. Meanwhile, the heat has 
been accumulating and circulating through a 
system of fire-proof earthenware pipes, causing 
the stove to give off from the whole of its ex- 
tended surface a gentle warmth from morning 
till evening without a fresh supply of fuel. As 
the stoves of several rooms are kept going daily 
during winter, the adjoining corridors are warmed 
by natural attraction, with the result that through- 
out the whole house a pleasant and equable 



202 German Life 

temperature is maintained all day long, even in 
the severest weather. As compared with the 
English system of heating, the stove system has 
the great advantage that it uses little fuel and 
wastes none, while the heating is perfect. On 
the other hand, the absence of an open range 
and the closing of the stove do away with effi- 
cient ventilation, and where other means are 
not adopted to secure this the disadvantage is 
considerable. 

The food which is found on the average 
German table is simple enough, though, judging 
by the number of meals served during the day, 
the culinary arrangements of the household 
would appear to require considerable thought 
and time. There are five meals, spread over 
twelve hours. The introductory one is known 
as the "first breakfast," and is taken any time 
between seven and nine o'clock. Its propor- 
tions would hardly commend it to the English- 
man, with his addiction to substantial morning 
dishes, for it consists merely of a cup of coffee, 
with or without rolls, for inveterate smokers 
will declare that a cigar at this early hour makes 
baker's fare superfluous, and also gives tone to 
the day. At half-past ten or eleven o'clock 
comes the "second breakfast," a simple lunch- 
eon of sandwiches, sausage, or eggs, with wine 
or beer. In the middle-class household dinner 
comes as a rule at from one to two o'clock. 



Woman and the Home 203 

Soup is a sine qua non, and the skilled house- 
wife will see to it that the same kind does not 
come to the table more than once a fortnight ; 
for Germany, at any rate, does not share the 
reputation of the country which has many 
churches but only one soup. Hot dishes are 
also an essential, for the convenient cold-meat 
dinner is an enormity which a German cook 
would not perpetrate. A good deal more care 
is bestowed both on the variety and preparation 
of vegetables than is common in the same class 
in England, and "cabbages (or any other vege- 
tables) just as God made them " never make an 
appearance on German tables. Puddings and 
sweet dishes in general are but little cultivated, 
but fruits and "conserves" are freely used, 
though the German cook has an unfortunate 
prejudice against single fruit dishes, and a 
fondness for experimenting with unspeakable 
combinations. About four o'clock comes after- 
noon coffee and cake round the table. Even 
the workman insists on making a pause at this 
hour, and calls the simple collation of which 
he partakes his "vesper," though the factory 
threatens to extinguish the custom. Finally, 
at eight o'clock, comes supper, which is as a 
rule a substantial meal, for cold meats, both 
fresh and cured, and fish salads accompany the 
dark-brown rye-bread, heavy but exceedingly 
nutritious, and tea or beer. This is not the 



204 German Life 

place for dissertations on cookery, but several 
valuable vegetables are needlessly neglected in 
England which in Germany are very properly 
held in great esteem. There, English celery, like 
rhubarb, is but little used, — clumps of rhubarb 
adorn the squares in Berlin as ornamental shrubs, 
— but the German form of celery, which Eng- 
lish gardeners call celeriac but do not grow, is 
extensively cultivated for the sake of its large 
root, which makes a most delectable salad. 
Portugal cabbage, kohlrabi, and wax-beans (a 
yellow, wax-coloured bean as large as the 
dwarf-bean, which is only used as a salad) are 
also vegetables deserving of more attention. 

Several old customs of the table are still 
observed. As the guests take their seats, a 
genial "May you dine well!" {IViinsche wohl 
:(U speisen !) is exchanged ; and when the repast 
is over, a happy and satisfied "Blessing on the 
meal ! " {Gesegnete Mahl:!;^eit !) and a shake of 
hands all round cement good feeling. In the 
middle-class household the dishes, both meat 
and vegetables, are handed round, the fowl or 
roast being cut up at a side table. First brought 
to the mistress of the house at the head of the 
table, she sets them in circulation, either by 
attendant or from hand to hand, and they return 
to her when everyone is served, to go the same 
pilgrimage later, when replenished, if necessary. 
This custom of passing round is open to compli- 



Woman and the Home 205 

cations, as occurred when an English scholar 
was being entertained by a company of his 
colleagues in a certain university town. Dinner 
had reached the interesting stage of turkey, and 
as the guest of the evening, the dish was first 
brought to him. It was a small bird and he 
a big man, and, being unacquainted with the 
rule of the country, he thought it was intended 
to be his undivided portion, and accepted the 
dish (round, as German dishes are, and so not 
unlike a larger plate) with becoming thankful- 
ness. He had begun his feast before the joke 
was discovered by the rest. Uncontrollable 
merriment seized one after another of the guests, 
who hastily beat retreat from the room to avoid 
hurting anyone's feelings, until (so the story 
goes) the English savant was left alone with his 
turkey and his host. But even this misunder- 
standing was not as bad as the contretemps in 
which a poor student figured. He was invited 
to supper, and the joy of a hearty meal was 
keen and delightful. The dishes had gone 
round, and, in between, a huge loving-cup of 
white beer had passed from lip to lip. Then 
the gas accidentally went out, leaving the com- 
pany in utter darkness. His host's extremity 
was the student's opportunity. The white beer 
glass, he knew, was just before him, and the 
temptation to take one more draught of the 
cheering and not too common beverage was 



2o6 German Life 

too much for his scruples. He drank in the 
covering darkness, and replaced the glass, as he 
thought, where it had stood. When the gas 
was lighted, the loving-cup was found standing 
in the midst of a dish of vegetables. 



CHAPTER IX 

PLEASURES AND PASTIMES 

A CULTIVATED German would probably ob- 
ject to the description of the theatre as a 
form of social pleasure, for he is accustomed to 
regard it from a graver side. In one of his 
essays Thomas Carlyle says of the drama that 
while in England its right to exist is a perpetual 
subject of Mutual Improvement Society debate, 
in Germany it is of the very life of the nation. 
No one who knows Germany, even from the out- 
side, can fail to have been impressed by the 
serious place which the theatre occupies in the 
national estimation. Perhaps the first conclu- 
sion which the unthinking would draw would 
be that this fondness for the theatre is a sign of 
frivolity, or at least of a strong pleasure-loving 
vein. In reality, such a conclusion would be 
strangely illogical, and would wholly miss the 
significance of the theatre in German life. The 
true deduction is that the theatre is viewed from 
the educational standpoint, and in a quite 
207 



2o8 German Life 

subordinate degree from the recreative. Hence it 
is that the German town must be very small and 
insignificant indeed which would not think ill of 
itself, and regard its educational institutions as 
wofully lacking, if it were without a good thea- 
tre. But the character of the drama cultivated 
in the two countries will better establish this 
point. Ask the opinion of any average German 
theatregoer of the plays which are staged during 
a twelvemonth by even the best of the London 
houses, and the reply will be that, excepting the 
classical works — none too often produced — and 
a few others, these plays would never be toler- 
ated in Berlin, Dresden, Cologne, and a dozen 
other German towns ; their theatres would not 
give them, and, if given, their publics would re- 
gard them as a degradation of the legitimate 
drama. "In no town in the world," wrote 
Professor Fischer, of Innsbruck, recently in an 
article on the subject, "are there more theatres 
than in London, and the public pays more for 
its theatres there than anywhere else, and yet 
the aesthetic results are nil. The repertory is 
varied ; scenic effects have reached the highest 
degree of technical perfection ; the public loves 
the theatre ; but nevertheless art cuts a beggarly 
figure on the English stage." That is a severe 
verdict, but it can at least be matched by opinion 
of equal weight in England. Yet, as if to 
make still more incomprehensible this national 



Pleasures and Pastimes 209 

neglect of the drama and opera, English people 
flock to Germany in thousands to witness the 
Oberammergau Passion Play and the Bayreuth 
performances of Wagner's works, and it has 
been credibly asserted that tickets to the value 
of ;^400o have been sold in London alone for 
one Bayreuth season. A well-known English 
Shakespearian critic complained not long ago of 
the " practical suppression of Shakespeare on 
the London stage." Certainly it cannot be de- 
nied that the works of the greatest English 
dramatist are far better known, and, on the 
whole, better played, in Germany than in the 
country of his birth.' In the English provinces, 
Shakespeare is seldom heard on the stage, and 
then only by way of luxury, — say, the rare visit 
of a famous metropolitan company ; but hardly 
a German town could be named whose theatre 
or theatres do not regularly give at least the best 
known of his tragedies and comedies, while the 
Berlin theatres, both royal and private, devote 
an amount of attention to the Shakespearian 
drama which should be very trying to English 
pride, and equally stimulating to English self- 
respect. 

> The following appeared quite recently in a London literary 
journal : " A German publishing firm in Stuttgart, having 
issued a people's edition of Shakespeare's dramas in one volume, 
edited by the German Shakespeare Society, have sold in 
eighteen months no fewer than ten editions, each of two 
thousand copies." 



2IO German Life 

Nearly all the characteristics which dififeren- 
tiate the German from the English theatre are 
precisely those which would be expected in a 
country which takes the drama seriously. The 
sensational play, with its run of a thousand and 
one nights, is unknown in Germany, not be- 
cause great plays, and plays which grip the 
public imagination, are not produced there, but 
because in everything the theatre is viewed from 
artistic and educational standpoints. Well- 
known and esteemed plays are periodically 
repeated, but consecutive performances are not 
the rule. The large theatres give a different 
play every night for weeks together, save, 
perhaps, that popular works are oftener taken 
on Sundays, when the theatre is more generally 
accessible by the playgoing public. This custom 
involves another characteristic of the German 
theatre, — the stock company. This is the uni- 
versal rule, not merely in the cities, but in the 
small towns which maintain theatres, for in 
Germany the modern descendant of the "strol- 
ling player" is literally unknown. Only so 
would the German manager be able to have at 
command the extent and variety of repertory 
which his critical audiences require. The finan- 
cial difficulty is obviated in part by the less 
elaborate stage effects with which, in the smaller 
theatres at any rate, playgoers are contented, 
and by royal or municipal subsidies, where the 



Pleasures and Pastimes 211 

theatres are patronised, and thus are expected to 
maintain the highest possible standard. More- 
over, in a German play-bill an entire theatrical 
company is never made subservient to some 
one bright particular star of the footlights, whom 
it is said to "support." The German actor and 
actress support themselves. Each has his own 
place, which is — for him — the principal place on 
the stage. Individuality is thus more cultivated, 
and even the humblest player feels that he is 
something more than a unit in a long line of 
figures, whose quotient is the chanted celebrity 
of the hero of the leading role. One further 
feature of the English theatre — let it be granted, 
the provincial theatre comes here in question 
chiefly — is utterly unknown in Germany, and 
is as inconceivable there as the paltry sentimental 
songs which delight our middle-class concert- 
goers : it is the pantomime. The idea of asso- 
ciating this ludicrous survival with the modern 
theatre is one of the things which the German 
playgoer who knows England never succeeds in 
understanding. To his mind, accustomed as it 
is to view the theatre as directly supplementary 
in educational purpose and influence to the 
school and college, and the drama as one of 
the highest of moralising agents, such a strange 
conjunction is rude, brutalising, and monstrous. 
One reason for the very high excellence which 
characterises both drama and opera throughout 



212 German Life 

Germany is that territorial "particularism" which, 
while it has in politics been the bane of the 
country, has been entirely advantageous to cul- 
ture. As each State has its own capital and 
centre or centres of Court life, of education, 
refinement, and art, the drama and opera have 
been nurtured in many parts of the country 
independently. For drama, like all the arts, 
has traditionally enjoyed the special patronage 
of the reigning house in each State, both in the 
form of personal encouragement and financial 
help. Moreover, the pre-eminence maintained 
by the royal theatres has reacted upon private 
managers, who have every inducement to aim 
at the highest attainable standard. Small though 
his territory is, no living German sovereign has 
done greater service to histrionic art than the 
Grand Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. His efforts 
and sacrifices have created a company of players 
whose fame is more than national. His son, 
too, the Hereditary Prince, has done much, by 
his studies of the Greek drama and the practical 
application of the results to modern uses, to 
elevate the stage. The King of Prussia is patron 
of royal theatres at Berlin, Hanover, Cassel, and 
Wiesbaden, and the subsidies paid to them are 
considerable. But the relationship between 
the Crown and its playhouses is more than a 
financial one. The entire administration falls to 
the King or his Intendant. Subject to royal 



Pleasures and Pastimes 213 

veto and instructions, the latter possesses su- 
preme power in regard to tiie choice of plays, 
players, and musicians, and the general manage- 
ment of the theatre for which he is responsible, 
and even the rules for pronunciation which are 
issued by his fiat have more than the authority 
of the Encyclopedie. 

Berlin has for some years possessed a unique 
theatre, which aims at popularising the drama 
amongst the working classes. Yet this playing 
to the people involves no sacrifice either of taste 
or merit, for only plays of a high character, both 
literary and moral, are given. The London 
theatre director who concentrated his efforts 
upon enticing heterogeneous assemblies of arti- 
sans, operatives, costers, and dock labourers to 
witness high-class plays — among which, shall 
we say, Shakespeare's took a leading place — 
would be regarded as an idealist of the not very 
sane order ; yet add Goethe, Schiller, and Ibsen 
to Shakespeare, and this is precisely the mission 
of the Schiller Theatre in Berlin ; and wonder- 
ful — or not wonderful .?> — to relate, the mission 
is achieved with complete success. The theatre 
is carried on by a private company ; and though 
the combined edification and entertainment of 
the working classes of the metropolis are the 
primary object of both director and shareholders, 
the project has been placed on a hard commercial 
basis, and moderate dividends have been paid. 



214 German Life 

The prices of admission range from threepence 
to six times that sum for purchasers of six 
tickets at once, and from fourpence to two-and- 
sixpence where single tickets are bought. Here, 
as in other German theatres, there is a fixed 
company, and during the six years that the 
theatre has been carried on, it has developed 
a repertory of nearly a hundred and fifty plays. 
Though the theatre has had a marvellous career 
of full houses, it is, of course, impossible, with 
the modest revenue at command — for threepence 
per seat does not go a long way — to expend 
great sums either upon actors or upon staging, 
yet the company is admittedly one of a high 
order, and is able to stand with credit the criti- 
cism of a by no means undiscriminating Press. 
It is, moreover, an interesting fact that, besides 
paying its way, the Schiller Theatre is able peri- 
odically to invite thousands of children from the 
lower communal schools to free performances. 

If Germany is the chosen home of the acted 
drama, it is not less the musical country it always 
was, though the seventh day of the creation 
might seem to have been reached so far as the 
production of composers of gigantic genius goes. 
Love of music must go deep into the national 
character when men of such stern mould as 
Prince Bismarck and Marshal von Moltke could 
own to passionate fondness for the harmonies of 
voice and instrument. The same trait marks all 



Pleasures and Pastimes 215 

classes of the people. How powerful an element 
music forms in the national life is proved by the 
mere mention of the German songs, patriotic, 
popular, military, and academic. In no other 
country is there so much singing. Everybody 
sings when he can. Bronzed soldiers sing of bat- 
tle and Fatherland as they foot it over sandy road 
and stubbly corn-land to and from their fatigu- 
ing exercises. The stalwart gymnasts of the 
Turnverein sing lays which good old "Father" 
Jahn, their patron saint, left them, as they march 
to the district festival. Boisterous students, 
brimming over with animal spirits, break the 
silence of the streets with their musical homage 
to wine and the muses, as they tardily turn into 
their lodgings for the night. Bright-eyed school- 
boys and schoolgirls, on botanical study bent, 
mingle voices in cheerful round or part-song as, 
with teacher at their head, they eagerly hasten 
towards the forest, which is so much pleasanter 
than school on a hot summer's afternoon. Song 
is life to the German, and it would be difficult to 
exaggerate either the national or moral influence 
of this characteristic. Does not Schiller say : 

" Wo man singt, da lass dich ruhig nieder, 
Bose Menschen haben keine Lieder." 

So, too, instrumental music occupies a unique 
place in the affections of the people. The most 
popular concerts are orchestral ; and it is note- 



2i6 German Life 

worthy that the admirable bands which are found 
in all well-regulated cafe-gardens (and often in 
hotels) are not there simply to while away the 
time of idle guests, but to afford genuine enter- 
tainment, and frivolous music will seldom be 
heard. In every class of society a rare standard 
of taste prevails. Perhaps nowhere else are con- 
certs in general so classical in character. You 
may take up the programme of a people's con- 
cert, and you will find that the music is of 
the best kind. Moreover, the uneducated taste 
— almost worse than no taste at all — which tol- 
erates the admixture of classical and music-hall 
music in the same concert is never met with. 
Not less is true artistic feeling shown by the 
habit of regulating the length of a programme, 
not by the sum paid for admission, or the hour 
of beginning, but by the receptive capacity of 
the cultured ear and mind. But if a German au- 
dience is artistic and critical, it is not undemons- 
trative, be it pleased or disappointed. If the 
former, its satisfaction is exhibited with a hearti- 
ness that admits of no two interpretations. It 
must be admitted, however, that music-madness 
is one of the most amiable forms of popular 
aberration. 

Englishmen of all classes are proverbially fond 
of outdoor exercise, and a healthy tradition is 
still current to the effect that the battle of Water- 
loo was won in the playgrounds of Eton and 



Pleasures and Pastimes 217 

Rugby. The same addiction to sports and pas- 
times cannot be said to characterise the German, 
though he has compensations which his muscular 
critics in the land of cricket and football are apt 
to ignore. The military service which the able- 
bodied youth of Germany is compelled to un- 
dergo is of unquestionable physical as well as 
moral benefit, and it possesses the advantage 
which the optional seductions of the English 
athletic grounds do not, that there is little hope of 
escaping its wholesome discipline. The student 
world, too, exercises both sinew and nerve 
in the fencing-club encounters which are ar- 
ranged at frequent intervals during term, and 
which bear unlovely fruit in the hacked faces and 
bandaged heads that are always to be seen upon 
the streets of a university town. But a more 
practical substitute for sport as Englishmen know 
it is found in gymnastics. Turnen, as it is called, 
forms an important part of the curriculum of 
every school, both elementary and higher, 
whether for boys, girls, or infants; and while 
the athletic craze has not gone to the lengths 
one sees in England, it is by no means an un- 
common thing nowadays to come across advert- 
isements for higher school teachers in which 
"gymnastics" is bracketed with philology or 
mathematics as the qualifications required. The 
Gymnastic Club {Turnverein) is also a popular 
institution, to be found in every town, and its 



2i8 German Life 

exhibitions and contests are events of unfailing 
attraction. There is even a national athletic 
meeting once a year, in which clubs from all 
parts of the Empire participate. It is held in dif- 
ferent tov^ns of note in turn, and creates hardly 
less interest than the great meetings of the 
English trade-unionists and co-operators. The 
history of this movement is a very remarkable 
one. It was Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778 to 
1852), still revered as the "Father of Gym- 
nastics," who brought home to Germany the 
importance for young and old of gymnastic ex- 
ercise on scientific principles. He first intro- 
duced the practice in Berlin in 181 1, while 
engaged as teacher in a Gymnasium there, and it 
soon took hold of the people. Prussia was then 
in the throes of a national rebirth, and Jahn took 
a patriot's part in the Liberation War. Return- 
ing to his school when the war was over, he 
allowed himself to be drawn into politics, and, 
like so many of the finest spirits of that time, he 
fell under Government suspicion and disfavour, 
owing to his democratic views, and passed 
two years in prison. Released, he prosecuted 
his gymnastic crusade with renewed vigour, and 
lived to receive the Iron Cross from his King, and 
to sit in the German National Assembly of 1848 
as an extreme Conservative. Prince Bismarck 
has left it on record that he was strengthened 
both in physical powers and in courage by his 



Pleasures and Pastimes 219 

participation in the exercises of Jahn's Athletic 
Club, to which he belonged when resident in 
Berlin as a student. Monuments have been 
raised to Jahn by a grateful posterity, both in 
Berlin, where he worked, and in Freiburg, 
where he died and lies buried. It is solely ow- 
ing to Jahn's practice and precept that to-day all 
German schools systematically and rationally 
combine physical exercise with mental training. 
The more popular English outdoor games are 
as yet but little esteemed in Germany. Cricket 
has a few enthusiastic followers, but the en- 
couragement they receive is disappointing, for 
the game, by those who know anything about 
it, is generally regarded as an Englishman's odd 
whim. Tennis, up to a few years ago, was only 
played amongst the English and American col- 
onies, but it is making headway. Even football 
is slowly winning favour, especially in South 
Germany, though Berlin owns itself on the way 
to conversion. Football appeals to people very 
differently, and it is worth while quoting here 
the first impressions of a Berlin spectator of the 
game, as recorded in a leading journal of that 
city: "On Sunday afternoon [writes the corre- 
spondent] an uncommon spectacle was olTered 
to Berliners on the Tempelhofer Feld. Led by 
a military officer, twenty-five young men were 
to be seen gathering on the ground, where a 
space five hundred feet long and seventy feet 



220 German Life 

wide was measured off, then marked by poles 
and flags. At each end of the space a linen 
partition twelve yards high was erected, 
which gave the whole the appearance of a high 
tent. These preliminaries over, the young peo- 
ple entered an adjacent beer-house, and soon 
returned dressed in jockey-like costume. They 
were football players ! The game is extremely 
simple. An india-rubber ball, enveloped in 
leather, is defended by two parties. As soon as 
the attacking party succeeds in kicking the ball 
through their opponents' goal, they have won 
the game. Football, which in England is very 
popular amongst all classes, hardens and 
strengthens the body, and is therefore of very 
beneficial influence upon the health." Such an 
illuminating utterance on the subject of football 
by a German observer might find a fitting par- 
allel in, say, an Englishman's description of the 
doings of a Berlin students' fencing-room. 

But if young Germany does not play football 
in winter, it skates, and skates well. The se- 
verity of the season and the abundance of water 
give to skating a place which it cannot take 
in countries of more temperate climate. Yet, 
though the North German winter is winter in- 
deed, — insomuch that the frost often reaches that 
Russian intensity which caused the Emperor 
Nicholas to say that the two generals on whom 
he could always rely were Generals Janvier and 



Pleasures and Pastimes 221 

Fevrier, — the coldest months are, in reality, most 
healthy and enjoyable. Though the temperature 
should fall thirty degrees (Fahrenheit) below 
zero, the ice crust on the rivers become a yard 
thick, and cabmen be nightly frozen to death 
in the streets while waiting for fares, the purity 
and dryness of the atmosphere make the cold 
bracing and exhilarating where the far milder 
weather of England only produces unheroic fits 
of shivering and a general condition of wheezi- 
ness. Day after day, perhaps for several weeks 
together, there will be a brilliant blue sky over- 
head, and a dazzling mantle of white on the 
earth beneath, and each afternoon the sun sinks 
glowing crimson upon a pathless plain of snow. 
Winter rules severely, like the despot he is ; but 
at least his Court is splendid, and even his rigour 
is not ill meant. The existence of scores of 
skating clubs, formed for the serious cultivation 
of an art which lends itself to many athletic 
possibilities, speaks of the hold which this pas- 
time has obtained upon the affections of young 
and old. Of late years ski-ing has also become 
acclimatised in the hilly districts, and in the 
Black Forest alone its devotees number many 
hundreds.. 

While the masses have their special outdoor 
pastimes, the classes have theirs. Germany is 
still a country of great hunters, and the larger 
game flourishes and offers much sport as well as 



222 German Life 

profit to those who are fortunate enough to 
possess hunting rights. This is due not more 
to the abundance of forest and other preserves 
than to the great interest which the Government 
takes in the preservation of game and the regu- 
lation of its destruction and sale, in the way of 
forest laws. Red deer, roe, elk, fallow deer, 
wild boar, and moor and field game are amongst 
the sportsman's possible quarry. A curious ar- 
rangement has been legalised in some parts of 
Germany, — Prussia is an example. The owners 
or tenants of large estates — that is, estates of 
about four hundred acres — ^may exercise the 
right of shooting game, subject to the ordinary 
legal restrictions ; but smaller estates or holdings 
are combined, and the shooting rights are sold 
or leased by the local authority, which divides 
the proceeds amongst those entitled to them in 
proportion to the extent of their land, due com- 
pensation being given to the owners or holders 
in the event of damage being done to land or 
crops by either sportsmen or game. For most 
kinds of game there are statutory close times, 
and the law is very jealous of any infraction of 
these ; while the prohibition of the use of nets, 
traps, and snares applies equally to the owner 
of the shooting rights and to the illicit coveter 
of his neighbour's forest goods. Poaching is 
not so common as might be supposed from 
the abundance of game. The reasons are the 



Pleasures and Pastimes 223 

severity of the law, the careful watch that is kept 
by fiscal and private foresters, and the restrictions 
which apply to the sale and transmission of 
"Wild" of all kinds, for these alone make the 
risk of detection so great that the modern would- 
be poacher has found the game not to be worth 
the candle. 

" To give room for wandering, is it, 
That the world was made so wide." 

So said Goethe, and the sentiment would ap- 
pear to be commending itself more and more to 
his countrymen. The German tourist is seldom 
met in the British Islands, but he exists, and at 
the proper seasons of the year may be encount- 
ered in every beauty-spot of his native country. 
Yet the German is certainly not as fond of walk- 
ing as the Englishman, and the practice of ped- 
estrianism extends over a much more limited 
social area in Germany than in England, for it is 
there far more a matter of means than in the lat- 
ter. But, practical and systematic in this matter, 
as in most others, the Germans have facilitated 
tourist enterprise and pleasure in a way that is 
worthy of all praise. This has been done by the 
agency of the tourist clubs which exist wher- 
ever there is scenery worth visiting. These 
clubs, which together have many thousands of 
members, — single clubs having as many as five, 
six, and ten thousand, — make it their business to 



2 24 German Life 

survey the districts in connexion with which 
they are formed, measuring the distances, fixing 
guide and kilometre posts, with other conven- 
ient directions, making and maintaining roads 
and paths over mountain and through forest, 
bridging rivers and streams, establishing efficient 
hostel arrangements, with moderate charges, 
marking out famous locahties, opening up the 
finer outlooks, protecting dangerous spots, pro- 
viding shelters and seats, publishing maps, route 
charts, and guide-books, and generally making 
the way of the tourist as plain and easy as 
possible. 

One knows how these important services are 
done — or not done — for strangers in picturesque 
and hilly England. Generally, the initiative is 
left to local government bodies, which seldom 
go beyond the provision of a couple of benches 
in the village street, and which regard the mak- 
ing of passable foot-roads and the erection of 
guide-posts as trivialities too insignificant for 
their attention. In Germany these things are 
certainly done better. There is probably no dis- 
trict frequented to any degree which has not 
been made so easy of access that wayfaring men, 
even fools (which, alas, many are) need not err 
therein. There are large and wealthy clubs for 
the Harz Mountain district, for the Black Forest, 
the Taunus, Saxon Switzerland, the Thuringian 
Forest, the Riesengebirge, the Erzgebirge, the 




A BLACK FOREST PEASANT QIRL 
C. Heyden 



Pleasures and Pastimes 225 

Bavarian Alps and Tyrol, and a score of other 
well-known districts, not to speak of a great 
number of small clubs which do the same serv- 
ice for districts out of the beaten track of 
touristdom. Clubs which have charge of wide 
areas, or areas difficult and costly to work, di- 
vide themselves into "Sections," of which a 
single club may have as many as eighty, each 
with its special tasks and its special roll of mem- 
bers, whose annual subscriptions — from one to 
five shillings, as the case may be — are devoted 
in part to local, in part to general purposes. 1 
can myself speak from experience of most of the 
districts which have been named, and though 
the facilities for orientirung are naturally un- 
equal, they are better in the least eificient case 
than those that exist, say, in the Welsh mount- 
ains or the English Lake district. The system 
of road-marking is often very primitive, — perhaps 
nothing more than letters or crosses in different 
colours, placed upon prominent stones or trees, 
— but it is thorough, and saves the wanderer an 
infinity of pains, besides untold disappointment 
and loss of time. 

Touring is exclusively a masculine enjoyment 
in Germany. The woman's movement has not 
set in that direction as yet, and the gentler sex 
still regards with wonder not unmixed with 
politely restrained ridicule and mild indignation, 
the masculine misses, hailing from a certain 



226 German Life 

island where everybody is supposed to follow his 
or her own sweet will, who descend upon the 
favourite mountain and forest resorts of the 
Fatherland, performing incomprehensible feats 
of pedestrianism, attired in garments bewilder- 
ing in taste, fit, and general originality, and 
coolly belabouring everybody with whom they 
come in contact with marvellous variations of the 
native tongue. But an agreeable, lively, fashion- 
able bath, where, devotions to Hygeia duly 
made, a maximum of distraction may be enjoyed 
with a minimum of exertion, where fountains 
play, and music bewitches the ear, and coffee- 
gardens, with their endless possibilities of chat 
and gossip, are within easy reach at any moment, 
— that is the ideal holiday haunt of every German 
lady who entertains the right respect for herself. 
The "bath season" {Badesaison) is a very 
serious institution in Germany, and increasingly 
so as the well-to-do and leisured class grows. 
The great exodus to the baths synchronises, for 
obvious reasons, with the school holidays. 
When, therefore, the dog-days come round, 
bringing respite to nervous teacher and over- 
worked pupil, everybody who is anybody dis- 
appears for a time from the customary circle ; he 
(or more probably she) has gone to the bath. 
In baths Germany is certainly rich. There are 
Ems, for bronchial weaknesses ; Wiesbaden for 
gout, and its poor relation, rheumatism, besides 



Pleasures and Pastimes 227 

general bracing up ; Homburg for much the 
same, with a preference for royal and diplomatic 
invalids ; Kissingen, whose ferruginous salt 
springs did wonders for Prince Bismarck ; 
Baden-Baden for cutaneous and rheumatic com- 
plaints ; Nauheim, with its brine baths, Kosen, 
with the same, — a place much given up to scrofu- 
lous children, on which account it is known 
medically as the "German nursery" ; not to 
speak of Carlsbad (highly aristocratic) and Ma- 
rienbad, just over in Bohemia, both famous for 
hot saline springs ; and Gastein, in Austria, 
which offers eternal hope to the sufferer of that 
malady of civilisation, the disordered liver ; and 
a host of less popular places. 

A certain proportion of the visitors to the baths 
are attracted solely by their health-giving prop- 
erties. These are the genuine "cure-guests" 
{Radegdste), and they frequent the springs which 
best minister to their ailments year by year with 
unfailing regularity. There are also the fashion- 
able lady invalids, — the pleasure-lovers pure and 
simple, — and they form the large majority. As, 
however, each bath offers its own distinctive 
social attractions, the choice of a resort is for 
them not the least perplexing of domestic prob- 
lems. Where circumstances permit of it, the dif- 
ficulty is solved by taking all the baths in turn, or 
at least those in which the amenities of life are 
most notoriously cultivated. But this policy of 



228 German Life 

strict impartiality is never avowed. Madame is 
too ingenious, too diplomatic. There must, at 
any rate, be the show of necessity. So the place 
of resort for the coming summer having been 
settled in her mind betimes, the malady which it 
is warranted to cure has somehow to be con- 
tracted, and in order to do this a certain humour- 
ing of the family doctor is essential. Wiesbaden, 
for example, means relief to the victim of nerves, 
and it is in itself a pleasant, lively resort, offering 
a perpetual round of delightful distractions, be- 
sides being conveniently near the Rhine. Hence 
it is discovered long before spring is out that a 
"cure" at Wiesbaden is an absolute necessity 
this year. An attack of nerves is no improbable 
infliction for the most robust-looking of individ- 
uals, and if you solemnly declare that you have 
it, not all the doctors in the world can prove the 
contrary. " So Wiesbaden would be just the 
thing, Herr Doctor, — nicht wahr ? " Herr Doc- 
tor smiles, and will think about it. With each 
repetition of the urgent question the doctor be- 
comes more and more convinced that the com- 
plaint is real, and should be neglected no longer, 
and that Wiesbaden may be expected to effect a 
radical cure. The battle is won. With the fam- 
ily doctor on her side, Madame encounters with 
confident equanimity the domestic incident who 
carries the money-bag, — it will be an easy 
walk-over, and she knows it. 



Pleasures and Pastimes 229 

The life of the German baths is pretty much 
the same everywhere, — whether it be Wiesbaden 
or Ems, Baden-Baden or Gastein. Some are 
livelier than others ; some presuppose deeper 
purses, or at least purses better filled than the 
rest ; some have longer, some shorter, seasons ; 
but in all there is the same hygienic routine to 
be gone through, the same variety of pleasures 
to be enjoyed in compensation. Drinking the 
waters is the first and least agreeable duty of the 
day, and it is generally undertaken very early, — 
always before fast is broken. In the more pop- 
ular places, during the rush of the season, long 
columns of shivering people, each with glass in 
hand, may be seen as early as six o'clock, slowly 
filing past the favourite springs which pour forth 
their unsavoury hot water and health. They 
take their draught, and go home again, to bed 
or coffee, as the case may be. It is an odd sight, 
half humorous, if at least a quarter tragic, and 
reminds one of nothing more forcibly than of the 
string of invalids hobbling into the " Fountain 
of Youth," in one of Cranach's famous paintings. 
During the day life wears a pleasanter aspect. 
There are the rendezvous, at well-known hours 
in the Kurgarten, with music of the best ; the 
tennis parties and drives in the country ; and in 
the evening soirees and balls in the Kursaal, be- 
sides the amusements which are provided in 
town by private entertainers. Altogether, life 



230 German Life 

can be made decidedly tolerable, for the time be- 
ing, for even the most exacting of connoisseurs 
in social relaxation. There is, of course, a high 
bill to pay at the end of it, but that is a matter 
for the domestic incident, who meanwhile re- 
mains at home, languishing or otherwise, accord- 
ing to circumstances into which it would be 
impiety to inquire. The Germans have invented 
an expressive name for the husband whose wife 
is recruiting her health alone at the bath : he is 
called the "Straw-widower." 

Where fashionable complaints play no part in 
determining the holiday resort, the choice may 
lie between mountain, lake, river, and sea. 
Tired brain- workers, and still more the artist 
world, naturally gravitate towards the Bavarian 
Alps, and even — before the noisy season breaks 
in — to the Harz Mountains. The beautiful lakes 
of Bavaria also entice increasing numbers of 
visitors every year, and the towns and villages 
which line the Rhine from Bonn onward to 
Mayence contain no small part of Germany's 
roving population during the summer months. 
North German people of modester means, and 
especially those with families of young folk, 
frequent the many lovely spots on the Baltic Sea 
coast, or, if preferring inland resorts, the Black 
Forest and Thuringia. Among the more popu- 
lar haunts of Berlin pleasure-seekers with short 
time at disposal are Heligoland, Saxon Switzer- 



Pleasures and Pastimes 231 

land, and the Spree Forest. This last region, 
lying a few hours by rail from Berlin, has a 
peculiar interest from the fact that it is one of 
the few remaining homes of the decaying Wen- 
dish race. The physical features of the country 
are not particularly attractive ; but it is a curi- 
osity of travel there that the principal means of 
communication between village and village is 
by water. Along the water highways you are 
paddled in shallow boats by stout countrymen ; 
and though one experience of the kind is novel 
enough, a second is apt to become monotonous 
and fatiguing. When he goes abroad for pleas- 
ure — as he does more and more every year — 
the German prefers either Switzerland or the 
Austrian Tyrol, though Italy in the right season, 
and Norway and Denmark all the summer 
through, are nowadays largely visited. France 
is no longer much favoured, while England is 
not known at all to the lover of nature, but re- 
tains its old reputation as a barren island, cloud- 
capped and fog-bound all the year round. 

To say that the English are not invariably 
popular at the German baths is to hint at certain 
constitutional defects of temperament and man- 
ners which many travelling English folk, of both 
sexes, take quite unnecessary pains to force 
upon the attention of those whose country they 
happen to asit, and whose hospitality they are 
therefore eij 'ing. To speak of the typical 



232 German Life 

Englishman's thoughtlessness when abroad is to 
retail a thrice-told tale. Everybody is aware of 
it save the typical Englishman himself ; and un- 
til he acquires the knowledge of his ignorance, 
and shows fruits meet for repentance, the strict- 
ures which are passed upon his countrymen 
wholesale wherever they show themselves on 
the Continent will continue as often as not to 
fall where they are least due. It is astounding 
that English people who can be absolutely prud- 
ish in matters of form at home often commit 
the grossest acts of boorishness abroad, without 
apparent consciousness of impropriety. If the 
following incident is unique it is only so in its 
character, — not in its spirit. A gentle English 
girl, incapable at home of the slightest breach of 
good taste, meets upon a highway in the Tyrol 
a country maiden of her own age. Everybody 
knows, or should know before travelling in that 
part of Europe, that amongst Tyrolese women 
the rural costume is worn in the better as well 
as in the lowly classes of society. Struck by the 
girl's dress, the English visitor accosts her in 
familiar words, and, heedless of the indignant 
blush, fingers her ribbons, smells her flowers, 
and finally, having made a thorough all-round 
stare, goes on her way without a word of ex- 
planation. She is ignorant that she has insulted 
the daughter of a high-born landed family, per- 
haps a score of times older than her own, — still 



Pleasures and Pastimes 233 

more ignorant that she has increased the English 
reputation abroad for unpardonable rudeness and 
thoughtlessness. One hears of such incidents, 
and it is difficult to reply. The natural excuse, 
that such conduct is an exception, is true enough, 
but foreigners are apt to judge English people — 
as we are apt to judge foreigners — by the par- 
ticular and not by the general. In the bathing- 
places the English are not a whit more popular 
than elsewhere, and the reasons are precisely 
the same. The following words, taken from 
a letter which appeared in the London Times 
several years ago, will aptly illustrate the spirit 
which makes the English people so thoroughly 
disliked : 

"No sustainable objection can, of course, be 
made to Germans visiting a watering-place in 
their own country, but this town (Homburg) 
has been so essentially English for so long a time, 
that the presence of ' foreigners ' is felt to be 
almost an intrusion. I do not defend our fas- 
tidious exclusiveness, which makes us detested 
in almost every country in Europe, but merely 
note the fact. The English are a warm-hearted, 
kindly race, but this insular dread of foreign- 
ers colliding unpleasantly with our habits and 
prejudices causes us to be everywhere misun- 
derstood." 

There is a homely little rule, not yet out of 
date, though often forgotten, the application of 



234 German Life 

which would enable the most insular and pre- 
judiced of us to judge fairly and candidly the 
spirit of these reflections. Suppose a German 
visiting England were so to speak of Bath, what 
outcries against foreign impertinence, what 
calls for prompt measures of exclusion against 
the overbearing alien we should hear ! The 
fact is that there is very little misunderstand- 
ing regarding us and our ways on the part 
of the " foreigner," — we are so blunt as to 
allow him no excuse for that. The English 
who create for their nation so unenviable a reput- 
ation amongst "foreigners" — whom we so call 
even in their own land — achieve that end by the 
simple expedient of a selfish disregard of others. 
In truth, it is not reserve and exclusiveness 
which the "foreigner" resents, for he has sel- 
dom any wish to make the acquaintance of vis- 
itors who do not take the trouble to disclose 
their amiable traits ; but he does resent, and 
resent wrathfully, the snobbishness, want of 
consideration, and discourtesy that are so often 
shown to him in his own country by those who 
have invited themselves to be his guests. Eng- 
land has of late years known something of the 
trials of " splendid isolation." They have prob- 
ably been bracing and helpful in many ways ; 
they have certainly left her wiser and soberer. 
But it is no special virtue to stand alone when 
friends can be had, not, indeed, for the asking. 



Pleasures and Pastimes 235 

but for the winning ; and the name of England 
would sound pleasanter in the ears of more than 
one Continental people, if those who travelled 
abroad were as careful to take good manners 
with them as good money. 




CHAPTER X 

THE BERLINER 

AN Empire made up of many States and not 
a few races naturally offers very distinct 
contrasts of character. Thus, the Rhinelander 
stands for vivacity and light-heartedness ; he is 
fond of pleasure, and looks by preference on the 
bright side of life. The Bavarian possesses a 
character of heavier calibre ; he is easy-going, 
and a good fellow to get on with. In affairs he 
represents an all-round capacity seldom ascend- 
ing to marked prominence, but useful and prac- 
tical, if prosaic. The Wurtemberger is homely 
and canny, shrewd as becomes the son of a 
pastoral land, but genuine and trusty. The 
Saxon is pushing and plodding, not brilliant, 
though he can always hold his own ; a man 
given to thinking and acting for himself, and 
beholden to nobody for counsel or countenance. 
More than any other branch of the German 
family, the Prussian specially represents the im- 
perial, military, and official spirit ; the capacity 
236 



The Berliner 237 

to govern is pre-eminently his. Love of order, 
system, discipline has been developed in him 
under the influence of a succession of able rulers, 
who led their people as well as drilled them, and 
who invariably carried through the work they 
took in hand. He unites not a few traits of the 
old Roman character. In temperament he is 
energetic and alert, and he is never found mak- 
ing poetry when his house is on fire ; while 
alive to the serious side of life, he is by no 
means phlegmatic, and he has time for play as 
well as for work. 

Yet no German type possesses a stronger in- 
dividuality than the true son of the Empire-city, 
Berlin, though his evolution has been the work 
of a comparatively few years. By the " Ber- 
liner," as he is understood in Germany, and is 
depicted in much of the ephemeral literature of 
the leisure hour, is not meant either the cultured 
resident of the metropolis on the one hand, or 
his neighbour at the social antipodes on the 
other, though nowhere is more character seen 
than amongst the unlettered folk of Berlin ; not 
the colonists of suburban villadom, much less 
the members of the military caste, or of that 
equally close corporation, the bureaucracy. For 
note well that not every resident of Berlin is a 
" Berliner," nor would he thank you for insist- 
ing on the identity. The type is, indeed, hard 
to define other than by the name which describes 



238 German Life 

him to every German ; for the word "Berliner" 
tells everything there is to know about him, 
sums up all his characteristics, his virtues, his 
failings, his gay abandon, his unfailing good- 
humour, his irrepressible comicality. 

Broadly, the typical " Berliners " form a com- 
posite section of the metropolitan population to 
which the commercial, the minor official, and 
the lowlier grades of the professional class 
equally contribute. A severe critic of the " Ber- 
liner" would say that he is vulgar. Fine in 
feeling he is not. He is essentially loud and 
bourgeois in the well-recognised significance of 
the words, limited in social and intellectual out- 
look, ostentatious and fond of parade, devoted 
(the female half of him) to gauds and dressiness, — 
the "Berlinerin" will picnic in the Grunewald 
in robes fit for a salon, — given to good living, 
and riotously extravagant in his pleasures and in- 
dulgences. Enter his dwelling, and though all 
the surroundings should betoken comfort if not 
affluence, you will find few books there. For he 
does not read, — he only "takes a newspaper," 
by preference a certain enterprising journal 
which is notorious for frivolity and misnamed 
piquancy. 

The " Berliner" is no melancholic by temper- 
ament. The shades and half-tones of life's 
picture have little interest or attraction for him. 
He is a born optimist, and looks at the world 



The Berliner 239 

through yellow spectacles. Time brings him 
but one message, which he does not- fail to hear 
and honour: "Be merry" ; and in ability to 
get satisfaction out of his existence the "Ber- 
liner" is unsurpassed. It may be said that to 
ignore all but the lighter aspects of life is to 
miss life's proper proportions, and that the philo- 
sophy of pleasure is of necessity shallow and 
partial. But the "Berliner" is a practical hed- 
onist, and conscious philosophy of life he has 
none. 

Nothing could exceed the good-humour of 
the "Berliner." He has an inexhaustible pa- 
tience, and Mark Tapley himself could not have 
been merrier under difficulties. Is it a public 
event which draws the whole city into the streets, 
— a royal progress, a military parade, a political 
demonstration.? The "Berliner" can pleasur- 
ably while away the waiting hours as no other, 
and keep even ponderous gendarmes in good 
spirits. Truly, all things come alike to him. 
Let him be on pleasure bent, and nothing can 
daunt him ; pleasure he will have, even though 
the heavens fall in the most disagreeable of 
ways, and the very inconvenience and annoy- 
ances of the moment are turned to gay account. 
The meteorological temperament is unknown 
to him ; he has a soul superior to such trivial- 
ities. On a wet holiday you may be sure to 
meet him in the forest and river haunts around 



240 German Life 

the metropolis enjoying himself to his heart's 
content ; if not contemplating nature from the 
recesses of an umbrella, at least contemplating 
his fellow-man at the table of one of the many 
tree-overshadowed beer-gardens which he there 
frequents, and which are an essential feature of 
his ideal sylvan landscape. You think that the 
rain has damped his ardour, as it has damped 
yours. Not a bit of it ; with wonderful buoy- 
ancy his spirits rise to the occasion, and out of 
the gloom and melancholy (as it appears to you) 
of his surroundings he extracts unfailing jollity. 
It is a convenient and enviable faculty, that of 
seeing good in everything, and the "Berliner" 
possesses it in a rare degree. To him the 
world is the best possible, and Berlin is its 
happy cosmopolis. In passing, the invariable 
rule may be laid down that where you find one 
"Berliner," you may safely expect to come 
across many others not far away, for the 
"Berliner" is gregarious; he moves about in 
flocks. He is also a social being, and wherever 
he may be, and v^'^-"^,ever he may be about, he 
must consort with his kind, — which is neither 
you nor those like you, but his fellow "Ber- 
liners." But it is when throwing himself with- 
out restraint into his pleasurable occupations 
that our "Berliner" shows one of his least 
dignified sides. Then he is no longer a man, 
but a child, boisterous, unruly, and hatter-mad. 



The Berliner 241 

There are certain favourite breathing-places, 
not far separated by rail from the German cap- 
ital, which are shunned as though they were 
leper settlements at those periods of the spring 
and summer when the "Berliner" is wont to 
indulge his questionable propensity for "week- 
end excursions." For rest-seeking people to 
visit them in such an association is impossible, — 
as impossible as to camp out in a zoological 
garden. The "Berliner" means no harm, of 
course, and it is not his fault that he was made 
with the spirits of a schoolboy, and all his cap- 
acity for mischief ; but at such times and places 
his company is not the most delightful to cult- 
ivate, — that is all. 

Decidedly the "Berliner's" manners are not 
of the finest order, and his ideas of chivalry 
are often of a crude and undeveloped kind. 
But he is amiably human ; his instincts are 
in the abstract kindly ; and he is emphatic 
on the principle of " Live and let live." Though 
a regular theatregoer, the church hardly recog- 
nises his face, for it onb' «;ees him when 
the festivals come round, or wnen he is bury- 
ing his relatives. There is a certain vein of 
sentimentality in him, but he is not a philan- 
thropist. His giving is spasmodic and uncert- 
ain ; to-day he may allow himself to fall into 
unheard-of benevolence, — for a "Berliner"; 

to-morrow not a charity in Christendom could 

16 



242 German Life 

draw from him a doit. As likely as not he 
compounds his obligations to the poor by 
membership of the "Association against Men- 
dicancy," the advantage of which is that by 
paying an annual subscription of several shillings 
you can, with a good conscience, threaten to 
kick unfortunate beggars down-stairs, and can 
go to rest every night conscious that you have 
left no social duty undone. The "Berliner" is 
said to be humorous. Humour, like charity, 
is a variable quality, and that which passes as 
wit in one circle of society would be voted dull, 
flat, and soporific in another. If, therefore, the 
"Berliner" be not denied this claim, — and cert- 
ainly he is fond of jokes, — the qualification is 
needed that our definition of humour must not 
be made too searching. Nevertheless, he is dis- 
tinctly ready at repartee, and many of his witty 
sallies are embodied in the impoverished pro- 
verbial philosophy of the metropolitan bour- 
geoisie. 

The "Berliner" has other failings than those 
which have been noted, though he is not con- 
scious of any one, — the most convincing proof 
of his humorous sense that could be given. 
Perhaps most of them may be fairly described 
as the faults of his virtues. An inextinguish- 
able propensity for seeing the lighter side of 
things inclines him to an exaggerated fondness 
for ridicule, and reverence is no part of his 



The Berliner 243 

character. As life and the world themselves 
are a joke, everything tangible and intangible 
is a fit subject for jest ; and as his humour is 
not alv^ays of the fine and delicate kind, he often 
falls into untoward breaches of taste. Nor does 
he learn with experience, for reflection never 
comes to his aid, and there is no good breeding to 
put a period to his extravagance and excess. In 
fine, though the "Berliner" has merits of a 
solid kind, he has not yet passed the infancy 
of culture. As raw material, he is a very valu- 
able human element, but he needs, so to speak, 
clarifying and working up. He has brain 
enough ; his intelligence is strong and robust ; 
with all his fondness for pleasure and beer- 
drinking he is capable of any amount of exertion 
when the spirit of work is on him. What he 
needs most is the cultivation of qualities of mind 
and heart which are there in the rough, and 
whose active assertion would redeem his present 
ungainly philistinism. 

The mention of the "Berliner" inevitably 
suggests the gayer aspects of German life. Few 
great cities more abound in facilities for amuse- 
ment, and none uses these facilities more largely, 
than Berlin. Its theatres are many, and every 
branch of the drama is strongly represented. 
The character of all the serious playhouses is 
high, and several at least of the private ventures 
need not blush by comparison with the Royal 



244 German Life 

Theatre itself. The opera, too, boasts royal 
patronage and a special home of its own. The 
concert halls are, if not numerous, excellent, 
and nowhere does the tone-artist meet with 
more intelligent audiences. The music and 
variety hall is also there in every grade of re- 
spectability, for in Berlin, as in other cities, 
there is here a shadowy side to be seen or 
passed over. It is in summer that the pleasure- 
seeking instincts of the "Berliner" are most 
actively exercised. Then the outdoor life which 
is alone possible in a warm climate is develop d 
to the utmost. The Zoological Gardens atid 
the Exhibition Park are favourite rendezvous 
both by day and night, and a hundred spacious 
Vienna cafes, open to the street, are not suf- 
ficient to contain the multitudes which are at 
the close of day tempted to a respite from the 
dull actualities of life by the brightness, vivacity, 
and innocent gaiety which cause these public 
haunts to have a singular attraction for leisurely 
people of a certain temperament. 

The cafe occupies a special place in German 
life, and its popularity strikes every foreign 
visitor, who, as likely as not, soon falls himself 
to some extent under its spell. The institution 
has little in common with the English hotel, less 
with the English tavern, and none at all with 
the liquor bar. Though, as the name implies, 
coffee is a staple drink in these places, there is 



The Berliner 245 

no restriction, no exclusion ; the difference lies 
rather in the fact that, besides being a regular 
and irreproachable house of refreshment, it is 
also a centre of the most decorous sociability. To 
the cafe husbands can take their wives, brothers 
their sisters, and mothers their children, with- 
out fear or scruple. You will never hear bad 
language, and you will never see drunkenness, 
either by day or night. One reason for the 
general high standing of these places of resort 
is the consciousness that, as they are intended 
fe t everybody, it is everybody's business and 
inierest to see that their good fame is maintained. 
Frequently there is attached to the cafe a large 
garden, and in summer-time this will generally 
be found every evening filled to its utmost 
capacity by respectable, well-conducted people. 
There is much to be said for this way of pass- 
ing the closing hours of a sultry day in towns, 
where arbours and balconies are not for the 
million. Indoor intercourse in close, stuffy 
rooms at home is more or less a matter of 
physical torture even in the evening hours, 
which, in the height of the German summer, 
are the only part of the day when one can be 
said humanly to live ; and he must indeed have 
a soul above mundane weaknesses who is 
insensible to the amenities of cafe-g2iXdQn life 
under such circumstances. What can be pleas- 
anter than to chat, and listen to well-played 



246 German Life 

music, in the open air, under the walnut trees, 
by the light of countless coloured lamps, with 
every specific which civilisation has devised for 
the relief of weariness and thirst within call? 
It is not difficult to explain the townsman's de- 
votion to his cafe. It is attractive in itself, it 
ministers to the genial, social instincts which 
are so strong in the German nature, and it is in 
harmony with the healthy joie de vivre which 
Germans share with the Southern nations. For 
the French term, having the thing itself, the 
German has an exact equivalent in the word 
Lebensfreude. We in England, lacking the 
thing, lack the phrase also. Simple words can . 
be the most faithful of indexes to a nation's 
characteristics ; and the word Gemilth and its 
derivatives, none of which can be translated 
into English, express another admirable quality 
which is distinctively German. Gemuthlichkeit 
describes the disposition which unites good- 
nature with the comfortable optimism that takes 
it for granted that all is well with the world. 
"Do not send a philosopher to London, and, 
for Heaven's sake, do not send a poet," wrote 
Heinrich Heine in his English Fragments ; "the 
grim seriousness of all things ; the colossal 
monotony ; the engine-like activity ; the mo- 
roseness even of pleasure ; and the whole of 
this exaggerated London will break his heart." 
It was the German love of life as a thing of 



The Berliner 247 

delight, of poetry, and romance, which spoke 
in Heine's severe but not wholly unjust diatribe. 
In passing, the geniality and equanimity which 
make the German attractive on the social side, 
when rightly understood, may help to explain 
on the economic side the quiet energy which 
has enabled him to attain his present position 
in the commercial race of the world. For while 
he knows how to labour, he knows also how to 
wait, and he can possess his soul in patience 
under the most trying circumstances, fortified 
by the belief that all things will come round to 
perseverance and persistence. 

But if it is love of geniality rather than pure 
conviviality which sends the Germans to their 
cafes, to insinuate insusceptibility to the latter 
would be to do them a grievous wrong. De- 
scribing the Germans of eighteen centuries ago, 
Tacitus spoke of them as given to indulgence in 
the cup. A mighty thirst still clings to the 
parent race, and has been acquired by inheritance 
by its descendants everywhere. Germany is the 
peculiar land of beer-brewing and beer-drinking, 
for though wine is both produced and drunk by 
preference in some of the Southern districts, and 
is extolled by most of the students' bacchanalian 
songs, beer is emphatically the national bever- 
age. The odd thing is that, in spite of the uni- 
versal notions about the German's beer-drinking 
proclivities, the generally accepted statistics of 



248 German Life 

beer consumption allot to England a prior place. 
Yet beer-drinking is very variable in Germany 
itself. Bavaria, though in the South, is the beer- 
drinking Sta.te par excellence, with a consumption 
of fifty-one and a half gallons per head of the 
population. Wurtemberg follows with forty- 
one and a half gallons, Baden with twenty-four 
gallons, and North Germany (including Prussia 
and Saxony) comes last with twenty-one and a 
quarter gallons per head ; while the average for 
the whole country is twenty-five and a quarter 
gallons. Perhaps no more significant illustration 
could be found of the different lines upon which 
German and English social custom and tradition 
have travelled than is offered by the views which 
are held in the two countries regarding the 
drinking habit and the temperance question. It 
has come to be recognised as orthodox English 
fiscal theory that alcoholic beverages should be 
regarded as luxuries, and that as such they may 
properly be subjected to exceptional taxation. 
In Germany such a view would hardly occur to 
a Finance Minister, however straitened his re- 
sources; there beer is viewed as an article of 
food, and thus as a necessity, and it is taxed 
accordingly. 

The mode of taxation is peculiar, and not uni- 
form throughout the country. In North Ger- 
many the Empire raises a tax of two shillings 
per hundredweight of malt and corn used in 



The Berliner 249 

brewing, — a rate which has existed in Prussia 
unchanged almost since the beginning of the 
century, — while in Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Baden, 
and Alsace-Lorraine higher State (instead of im- 
perial) taxes are levied, though, on the other 
hand, these States pay into the Imperial Treasury 
annual amounts equivalent to the proceeds of the 
North German tax when reckoned per head of 
the population. Repeated attempts have been 
made by the Government to increase the imperial 
beer tax, but thanks to a universal vested interest 
in this popular beverage, there is hardly a party 
or a group in the Reichstag that can be induced 
to listen to the proposal. Even the import duty 
on beer is only one or two shillings per hundred- 
weight. The entire annual proceeds of the beer 
taxes and duties which are raised by the collective 
States of the Empire barely amount to four mil- 
lion pounds, which is less than a third of the 
amount similarly raised in the United Kingdom, 
with its much smaller population ; and while the 
beer tax per head averages six shillings in Eng- 
land, it is only tenpence in North Germany, in- 
cluding Prussia and Saxony. 

As to restrictive laws, though the German 
loves to feel the paternal arm of the State gird- 
ing him around, it has hitherto proved quite im- 
possible to obtain public approval for such a 
regulation of the drink traffic as would be univers- 
ally regarded in England as wholly inadequate. 



250 German Life 

The Imperial Government has on two occa- 
sions during the last twenty years seriously 
tried to legislate upon the question, but without 
the slightest success ; and it is noteworthy, as 
illustrating the radical difference between Ger- 
man and English political parties bearing the 
same name, that the principal opposition came 
in each instance from the Liberals, whose leader 
has declared, "Nothing of any consequence can 
be done to discourage drinking by police and 
punishment." It is not long since a congress of 
German jurists, after deliberation and debate 
over the question whether the State should re- 
gard drunkenness as a penal offence, passed an 
emphatic negative resolution, and followed this 
up by declaring itself against any special legisla- 
tion to combat habitual inebriety and dipsomania. 
Fairness requires the admission, however, that 
in spite of the prodigious amount of drinking 
which goes on, drunkenness is far less common 
than in England, and from the standpoint of 
public and private sobriety Germany's reputation 
is very high. It is noticeable, too, that acute 
alcoholism is generally the result of the drinking 
of spirits, and in a less degree of wine. Beer 
may make people stupid, as Prince Bismarck 
once said, — and possibly other things as well ; 
but in Germany it cannot be called a prolific 
source of inebriety. The reason is not that the 
German beer-drinker always quaffs wisely and 



The Berliner 251 

well, but that the majority of German beers 
are light, and are as little comparable with the 
strong English ales in excitative power as the Ger- 
man country wines are with the port of the 
South. It is only in quite recent times that there 
has sprung up in Germany a temperance move- 
ment on the lines of that which has played so 
large a part in English social life for over half a 
century. The movement is carried on by an 
organisation known as the " Association against 
the Misuse of Spirituous Drinks," and, though 
young, its influence is said to be spreading 
rapidly both in town and country. 




CHAPTER XI 

POLITICAL LIFE 

PROGRESSIVE as Germany is in many things, 
and in none more than education, it may 
at first sight seem strange that in political ma- 
turity it is so far behind the Anglo-Saxon coun- 
tries. Yet it must be remembered that all 
progress is relative in degree and variable in 
character, according to the peculiar circum- 
stances and traditions of every nation. If, there- 
fore, Germany continues to-day to be a country 
of limited autocracies, the reason must be looked 
for in the accidents of its history. Granting also 
that these autocracies are not compatible with 
English ideals of government, the statement of 
that fact requires as a correlative the admission 
that English ideas of government, if applied in 
Germany without discrimination, would prove 
for a long time entirely unworkable. This is 
said not in defence of the political systems under 
which the German sovereigns possess so much 
real power, the people so little, — for whether 
252 



Political Life 253 

these are good or bad is hardly a question which 
the outside critic is called upon to decide, — but 
rather by way of explanation. The division of 
the country into so many petty principalities, the 
absence during so long a period of its history of 
any dominant central power, the wars without 
and the feuds within, the patriarchalism which 
would seem to be indigenous to German soil, — 
these are causes sufficient of themselves, with- 
out reference to peculiarities in the national 
mind and character, to account for the failure of 
Germany to keep abreast with the more liberal 
ideas and institutions which are prevalent in 
Western lands. Here, however, we must con- 
cern ourselves with the facts observable to-day, 
rather than with explanations of why they came 
to be as they are; and to the intelligent English- 
man, brought up in a bracing political atmo- 
sphere, and accustomed to forms of personal 
liberty which are the result of centuries of or- 
ganic development, the limitations by which 
political and civil life is beset in Germany are 
profoundly interesting. 

The sadness with which the Englishman, by 
repute at least, takes his pleasures is by the 
German — who is more than a match for him in 
the fine art of living rationally and happily — 
allotted to politics. A pursuit which to the 
Briton, thanks to the system of government under 
which he lives, and to the opportunity which it 



254 German Life 

affords for the free play of thought and speech, 
is a source of never-failing interest and healthy 
mental discipline, is to most Germans one of the 
most sterile and lugubrious of exercises. It is 
not that the average German of intelligence — at 
least in these days — is indiiferent to politics, for 
his mind is too alert, too critical, too inquiring 
to ignore so uncommon a source of speculation 
and controversy ; but rather that politics as a 
practical science is unprolific, and, so to speak, 
leads him nov^here. 

The German politician is certainly stronger on 
the theoretical than the practical side, and in 
general he is wonderfully well informed. His 
interest in foreign politics is far greater than the 
Englishman's, though ignorance and misconcep- 
tion enough prevail. One may judge of the 
place which foreign affairs take in his mind from 
the newspapers. Not merely the large daily 
journals but the smallest weekly provincial 
prints devote an amount of space to foreign let- 
ters and to leading articles discussing foreign 
questions which will never be seen in the same 
sections of the English Press ; and this charac- 
teristic of the newspaper is no untrue reflection 
of its readers' interests. I remember meeting in 
a small town in Central Germany a communal 
schoolmaster, who had for years made a study 
of the Irish Home Rule question. Mr. Glad- 
stone's first Bill on the subject was at the time 



Political Life 255 

under discussion, and this rural politician had 
mastered every one of its details. Not only so, 
but he had long before elaborated a most in- 
genious plan of his own for the pacification of 
Ireland and the satisfaction of the legislative 
aspirations of the Nationalists. It was certainly 
original, and in theory it worked admirably; the 
only defect was that it failed to make sufficient 
allowance for human nature. But whoever 
heard of an English village schoolmaster making 
a lifelong study of, say, the settlement of the 
Polish question, or the treatment of the Czechs ? 
If practical politics are a failure in Germany 
the system of government is altogether respons- 
ible, since it has been so devised as to afford the 
very slightest inducement to participate in po- 
litical life, and absolutely to repel those who, 
though capable of bringing to bear upon public 
questions well-balanced judgment and acute 
knowledge of the world, think too well of them- 
selves and their time to spend their lives in 
ploughing the sands. It is a commonplace as- 
sertion of our times — may it not also be said 
that the allegation is a symptom of the all-pre- 
valent spirit of doubt and distrust ? — that popular 
parliaments are now no longer merely on their 
trial, as they were said to be a generation ago, 
but have proved awkward and inefficient devices 
for applying to the community that irreducible 
minimum of compulsion which is of the essence 



256 German Life 

of good government. Under the parliamentary 
system (so it is said) the modern legislator is apt 
to mistake vexatious forms of coercion for legiti- 
mate regulation, and at best he succeeds in 
achieving infinitesimal results in return for a 
prodigious expenditure of time. Let it be con- 
fessed that our parliamentary machinery has not 
for some time worked with the ease and regu- 
larity and success which, justifiably or not, we 
have been wont to expect of it. Yet, at any 
rate, this may be said in mitigation of the defect, 
— if defect must be admitted, — that it has not 
arisen from any lack of interest or activity on 
the part of those who direct the machinery, or 
yet those who furnish it with motive power. 
In other words, it is not slackness of political 
thought, and not weakness of political life, of 
which complaint must be made in England, in 
France, in the United States. The one may 
have suffered in tone and depth, as all things 
must suffer in an age characterised by haste and 
restlessness, the other have suffered in motive 
and direction, but the decadence in each case is 
qualitative only : in pathological language, the 
malady is functional, not organic. 

In Germany, however, it is quite otherwise. 
There political life suffers from an inanition 
which makes health and vigour impossible. It 
fails to draw to it the nation's best talent and 
energy ; it fails even to enlist to the extent that 



Political Life 257 

is desirable its cruder and less disciplined forces. 
And the reason is not, as miglit be alleged in 
some countries, a reaction against exaggerated 
democratic tendencies, for these tendencies have 
never been allowed to get out of hand in Ger- 
many, but rather the absence of incentive, of 
stimulus, of attraction. But here we stumble 
upon contradiction after contradiction. The 
Parliament of the Empire — the Imperial Diet — is 
elected upon a suffrage far broader than that 
which exists in England, yet upon the policy of 
the Government it has little influence save nega- 
tively, and upon its constitution none at all. I 
say that its influence is negative, since the Diet's 
only way of making its power, such as it is, felt 
is by pursuing a course of resolute opposition 
and wilful obstruction. To begin with, the 
highest member of the Government, the Impe- 
rial Chancellor, is chosen by the unqualified will 
of the Emperor, by whom alone he can be re- 
moved from office. Parties may move up and 
down on the see-saw of popular caprice and 
favour ; majorities may come and go ; political 
leaders may rise and fall ; but the head of the 
Government continues the same, given but the 
grace of his sovereign, — against that rock neither 
Parliament nor populace can prevail. So, too, 
with other members of the Government, though 
they are few ; it is the imperial breath alone 
which makes and unmakes them. 



258 German Life 

But while the Ministers are but the mouth- 
pieces of their master, the master is, so far as 
direct legislative authority goes, no more power- 
ful than the meanest of enfranchised citizens. 
That is, he cannot himself, by constitutional 
right, either pass a law or prevent one from be- 
ing passed. Where, then, does legislative power 
rest? In two places, — in the Federal Council, 
and in the elected Diet, which bodies divide it 
between them equally. Nominally, either can 
initiate legislation ; in fact, neither can pass a 
law nor repeal one without the co-operation of 
the other, though in common practice the Gov- 
ernment virtually dictates to the Diet the legis- 
lative programme to which its attention shall be 
given. Hence it comes about that the functions 
of the Diet are almost exclusively critical. Now 
and then a party or a private member is fortun- 
ate enough to obtain a majority for a measure or 
a resolution, but unless the Government and the 
Imperial Chancellor at the end endorse it, his 
victory is barren. There are resolutions which 
have been passed by the Reichstag session after 
session, each time with a substantial majority, 
yet they never get farther than a formal record 
in the parliamentary proceedings, and the time 
and energy which have been needed to bring 
them there have been wasted. Such, for exam- 
ple, is a resolution on the subject of payment of 
members. This practice is general in the Ger- 



Political Life 259 

man monarchies — in Prussia, in Bavaria, in Sax- 
ony, in Wurtemberg — as well as in some of the 
smaller States, as Baden and Hesse, but the im- 
perial constitution contains a provision expressly 
forbidding it ; and though the Reichstag has 
frequently adopted a resolution calling on the 
Government to cancel this prohibition, the ap- 
peal has been consistently ignored. Prince Bis- 
marck did, indeed, concede to the deputies free 
railway passes for the duration of each session, 
and a week before and a week after, but this was 
as far as he would go, and his successors in the 
Chancellorship have proved equally unyielding. 

In the State Diets popular power is subject to 
still greater checks. There the governing factors 
are three, the Sovereign, the House of Lords, and 
the House of Deputies. As in the case of the 
Imperial Reichstag, the Ministers of State are 
chosen by the Crown, and owe responsibility to 
it alone. The Upper House is also, as a rule, 
the compliant creature of the Government, and 
it can always be relied on in an emergency to 
repel any aggressive movement from below. 
When it is added that the Chamber of Deputies 
is elected on oligarchic principles, applied in such 
a fashion that large masses of the population 
have no representation whatever, it will easily be 
understood that such a thing as popular govern- 
ment, even in a moderate sense, is at present 
inconceivable in Germany. 



26o German Life 

It is only during parliamentary elections that any- 
thing approaching political excitement occurs, and 
even then the precautions enacted by the Legisla- 
ture, and the additional measures enforced by 
the police authorities have the effect of restrict- 
ing this dangerous mental condition to the ut- 
most. Nominally, political utterance may enjoy 
free vent at such times, and if the law were 
equally observed, the universal right of public 
meeting and discussion would be undisputed, 
but in practice it is not so. Even in the large 
towns a large measure of police control is ex- 
ercised ; frequently obstacles are carefully thrown 
in the way of popular assemblies ; and the agents 
of law and order always reserve the right of dis- 
missing such gatherings as the last resort should 
their delicate sense of political propriety be 
offended. 

In rural districts free action is still more diffi- 
cult. " My people and I," said Frederick the 
Great once, "have come to the mutually satis- 
factory understanding that they are to say what 
they please, and I am to do what I please." 
Other times, other manners. Germany has since 
then come into the possession of a host of con- 
stitutions, each intended to curb the power of 
the Crown in favour of the people; yet if the 
people's power to act for themselves has in- 
creased, free speech, as Englishmen know it, is 
still far from being enjoyed. Yet the relaxation 



Political Life 261 

at election times of tlie normal condition of re- 
straint, slight though it is, is a welcome relief to 
the democratic parties. As soon as the day of 
election is officially announced — for a uniform day 
is observed throughout the Empire, an excellent 
arrangement which England would do well to 
copy — the newspapers of these parties jubilantly 
bid their readers bear in mind that " From to-day 
until the day of polling the consent of the police 
is no longer essential to the circulation of elec- 
tioneering prints in the streets and other public 
places," for at other times no such agitation is 
permitted. A week or two later come the elec- 
tions, and, in reality, nothing could be tamer, 
whether those to the State Diets, or those to the 
Imperial Diet. The former bodies are not only 
elected on a narrow franchise, but election is 
indirect. 

How this cumbersome piece of machinery 
works is as follows. As a preliminary measure, 
the primary electors (Urwahler) choose by open 
voting a number of electors proper {Wahlmdn- 
ner), and the actual choice of candidates is made 
by these, who likewise vote openly. Where, 
as in Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and other States, 
the exercise of the franchise is made dependent 
upon the payment of a certain amount of direct 
taxation, large sections of the community are 
debarred from any immediate interest in the 
elections, and the voting power of the qualified 



262 German Life 

electors is very unequal. In Prussia the tax- 
payers are divided into three sections, and are 
so classified as to represent equal amounts of 
taxation. The first section is composed of 
electors who pay the highest taxes to the amount 
of one-third of the whole sum ; the next section 
is made up of that number of taxpayers whose 
aggregate payments make up a second third of 
the whole; and the third section comprises the 
smallest taxpayers, and they constitute the great 
majority. These primary electors choose the 
electors proper in the proportion of one to every 
two hundred and fifty taxpayers in each section. 
The preliminary elections are dreary formalities. 
Though the purpose is strictly political, no meet- 
ings may be held, nor may there be any public 
discussion of the merits or claims of the second- 
ary electors for whom votes are to be cast. The 
name of the elector is called out, and unless he is 
present at the moment he forfeits his vote. If 
present, he is required to write his name in the 
poll-book against the candidates whom he de- 
sires to support. To make the system — con- 
fused and confusing in its very nature — more 
anomalous still, the distribution of seats in Prus- 
sia is based on the census of 1858 in the old 
provinces, and on that of 1867 in the newer. 
The result is that a strange medley of under- and 
over-misrepresentation exists. Berlin, for ex- 
ample, should, according to population, have 



Political Life 263 

twenty-three seats in the Diet, but it has only 
nine. 

Nevertheless, it is not suggested that the sys- 
tem of government in vogue works badly so far 
as its legislative results go. One might go 
further and say that to transplant to German soil 
the English parliamentary regime, with the al- 
most unlimited party power which it has de- 
veloped, would be unequivocally disastrous. 
Germany's loss is rather that its legislative and 
electoral arrangements do not induce the best of 
its citizens to take an active part in public life ; 
that they do not offer to these the bracing intel- 
lectual stimulus which is afforded in countries 
where parliaments are something more than 
figure-heads ; and that they deprive the nation 
generally of one most important part of the edu- 
cation and discipline of life. The result of these 
various discouragements to serious participation 
in the elections is that a majority of the enfran- 
chised do not take the trouble to vote. While 
in the elections to the Reichstag some seventy- 
five per cent, of the whole go to the poll, in the 
Prussian elections not more than thirty per cent, 
can be persuaded to exercise this right, and in 
the rural districts the proportion often falls as 
low as ten per cent. Not only so, but there is a 
strong body of intensely retrogressive political 
opinion bitterly opposed to any popularising of 
the existing parliamentary institutions. It is 



264 German Life 

found in those same parties — the Conservative 
and the Ultramontane — which quite recently 
voted in the Reichstag for the taxing of sea pas- 
sengers' tickets, on the ground (as the Clerical 
leader said) that "nowadays people travel too 
much ; it would be better if they stayed at 
home." Hence, when a year ago the Imperial 
Government undertook to repeal certain anti- 
quated legislation which prevented the combina- 
tion of political and other societies, it was 
against the furious protests of the reactionary 
parties, which deplored the contemplated act as 
a dangerous concession to dangerous modern 
tendencies. It is not long since a well-known 
Government official published a pamphlet flatly 
advocating the temporary disbanding of the 
Reichstag, the suspension of those portions of 
the constitution which relate to it, and the estab- 
lishment of an out-and-out dictatorship. 

"It is only a dictatorship," he wrote, "that 
can direct the healthy elements in the State into 
the right path. Let men out of every class of 
the population, and of every professional posi- 
tion, request the Emperor to induce the Federal 
Council to take the sole legislative power into its 
hands for three years. It is imaginable that the 
Federal Council might demand this authority 
from the Imperial Diet, which, in case of refusal, 
would simply be dissolved. The dictatorship, 
toned down in accordance with the nature of 



Political Life 265 

the German Empire by being conferred upon 
the members of the Federation, is inexorably 
required at the present moment." 

When it is added that these words are not 
those of a political novice, but express the ma- 
ture opinions of a man whose whole career has 
been passed in the very heart of political life, 
their weight and significance can be judged. I 
have known educated men in private life who 
have seriously advocated the same return to un- 
restricted autocracy. " What do we want with 
a Parliament.?" said one to me. "Our Gov- 
ernment knows what is good for us. I do not 
wish to vote ; all I care for is to be told what 
taxes I must pay, and then to be left alone." 
Yet the speaker knew England well, and had 
lived for years in the United States. This is, I 
grant, an extreme form of educated obscurant- 
ism ; though rare it is certainly not in two, at 
any rate, of the great national parties. 

The German voter has a greater toleration and 
respect than the English for the carpet-bag poli- 
tician. The candidates who seek the Conserv- 
ative vote and interest, for the most part in the 
"county" or rural constituencies, are in the 
majority of cases local magnates — sub-prefects 
{Landrdthe), large landowners, and the like. 
The Liberal and Social Democratic parties, how- 
ever, are compelled to rely very largely upon 
champions who combine politics with the 



266 German Life 

pursuit of a profession, — principally the law and 
journalism, — and not a few of the parliamentary 
representatives of these parties have no direct 
interest whatever, either by residence or posi- 
tion, with their constituencies, but live and 
work in the metropolis. A late Reichstag con- 
tained no fewer than one hundred and forty-five 
landed proprietors and farmers, — most of the 
latter belonging to the newly formed Farmers' 
Alliance, — one hundred and ten members of the 
legal profession, forty authors and journalists 
(chiefly the latter), twenty clergymen (largely 
Catholic), eighteen provincial mayors, and, 
amongst the rank and file, one chimney-sweep. 
One peculiarity of the elections to the Imperial 
Diet which has attracted attention in England at 
various times is the institution of the second 
ballot. The constitution requires that to the 
due election of a candidate he shall obtain an 
absolute majority of all the votes recorded. 
Where the candidates are three or more in 
number, and none of them secures the requisite 
majority of more than one-half the aggregate 
poll, the two candidates who stand highest must 
poll again within the next fourteen days on 
exactly the same register of electors. Should 
several candidates be eligible for a second ballot 
owing to an equality of votes having occurred, 
choice is made amongst them by drawing lots. 
In the case of the second ballot, too, an absolute 



Political Life 267 

majority carries the day, but in the event of a 
tie resuhing the decision is by lot. 

It is a much-debated question how far useful 
the second ballot is in Germany as a means for 
allowing large minorities to obtain a parliament- 
ary voice proportionate to their strength. In 
the abstract its value appears indisputable, but 
the question cannot be judged in the abstract, 
and no degree of theoretical perfection will out- 
weigh defect and failure in practice should they 
prove to be the verdict of experience. That the 
second ballot is but a poor makeshift as an at- 
tempt at proportional representation is best 
shown by its actual working, though, on the 
other hand, it may be objected that Germany is 
not a fair field for an experiment of this kind, 
because of its muhiplicity of parties and the 
strained relationship which exists between most 
of them. Disregarding several small groups, 
no fewer than ten recognised parties have been 
represented in the Imperial Diet for the past 
generation, and, counting every named group, 
there are seventeen divisions to-day, while, in 
the interval, six have disappeared, or have been 
absorbed in other groups. Some of these par- 
ties are able to work together under normal 
circumstances, — for example, the Conservatives 
with the Imperial party, and as a rule with the 
National Liberals ; the Radical Union with the 
Radical People's party, and occasionally with 



268 German Life 

the National Liberals, — but, in general, opposi- 
tion is characterised by decided antipathies, and 
not infrequently by quite needless asperity. This 
unamiable relationship of parties has its natural 
result. Instances might be quoted from every 
election where, owing to the absolute uncert- 
ainty of natural alliances and straight voting, 
a constituency gets for its deputy not the can- 
didate who represents the strongest homogene- 
ous party, but the one who is able to bring 
about the most unlikely combination of votes. 
Such results do not necessarily discredit the 
second ballot on general principles, but they do 
show that the peculiar case of Germany proves 
it to be no counsel of perfection, and affords 
no assurance that by its operation anything 
more than the roughest justice will be meted 
to the contesting parties. 




CHAPTER XII 

LOCAL GOVERNMENT 

IN a country of so many territorial divisions as 
Germany it is inevitable that uniformity in 
local government must not be expected. In- 
deed, it was only at the beginning of the past 
year that a universal code of imperial civil law 
came into operation^ and that thus the last im- 
portant link of Empire — if we overlook the 
special position allowed to Bavaria and Wurt- 
emberg in military and postal matters — was 
forged. For a quarter of a century a commis- 
sion of experts was engaged in reducing to 
order the bewildering maze of conflicting laws 
which was one of the accumulated anomalies of 
State disunity. The judicial systems which 
were in full force up to 1871 were not e'"^" 
German in origin. In some States there was a 
strong national element, but in general i reign 
influence preponderated. The 1^-' fiction 
which regarded the "Roman Empire or the 
German Nation " as the lineal descendant of the 
269 



270 German Life 

ancient Roman Empire, and the German Empire 
therefore as perpetuating the Roman-Imperial 
tradition, accounts for the widespread influence 
of Roman law. On the other hand, in those 
portions of the Empire which had been under 
French influence or absolute domination — as on 
the Rhine, in Baden, and in Alsace-Lorraine — 
the Code Napoleon still held good ; and con- 
fusion was aggravated by the permeation of 
these systems of law by German elements. 
The Empire had not long been established be- 
fore the criminal law and judicial procedure 
were made uniform throughout the country, 
and now that the same has been done with the 
civil law the last remnant of judicial chaos has 
disappeared, and throughout Germany the prin- 
ciple applies at last without reservation, — one 
citizenship, one law. 

But while the laws which affect Germans in 
their capacity as citizens of the Empire — that is, 
the laws bearing on their political and civil 
status — have been made identical, the laws 
which regulate their municipal and local life 
continue as before to be the province of the 
if'-dividual States, and for the majority of men 
and i/omen it is these laws which are of most 
consequence, since they affect most deeply, or 
at least n.ost visibly, their common interests 
and welfare In the towns the system of gov- 
ernment does not differ greatly in principle from 



Local Government 271 

the English, though there are certain important 
deviations in matter of detail. One is the ab- 
sence of that extreme multiplicity of public 
authorities, each specially elected for a distinct 
purpose, which has grown up in England. The 
Germans have their Poor-law and School Boards, 
but they are otherwise named and created than 
in England, being, in fact, mere departments of 
the central administrative Council of the town. 
In this way multiplicity of election, conflict of 
authority, and plurality of rating powers are 
obviated. For the discharge of poor-law func- 
tions the services of inhabitants other than Town 
Councillors are generally invited, and the law 
requires compliance with such calls to public 
duty under penalty, save in certain exceptional 
and clearly defined circumstances. 

The Prussian Town Council differs from the 
English in two very important points. Along- 
side the elected body there exists a more or less 
permanent committee, whose functions are ex- 
ecutive, — the Magistrat. As in England, it is 
the Council's duty to pass resolutions, and in 
general to decide what shall or shall not be 
done ; but it falls to the Magistrat to initiate 
most proposals, and to carry out all the behests 
of the elected Assembly. This executive is com- 
posed as a rule of the Mayor, a certain number 
of paid officials, who preside over special de- 
partments of municipal life, — as education, 



2 72 German Life 

sanitation, thie poor law, etc., — and otlier honor- 
ary members. It may be a question wliether we 
shall not have to come to some contrivance of 
the same kind, owing to the steady multiplica- 
tion of the duties of Town Councils in these 
days of municipal enterprise, and the example 
is at least worth bearing in mind. Not the 
wisest of Town Councillors can know every- 
thing, nor the most public-spirited have time 
for everything ; and now that municipalities are 
setting up as traders in so many directions — as 
in the supply of water, gas, electric light, electric 
power, tramways, workmen's dwellings and 
lodging-houses, abattoirs, and even sterilised 
milk — administrative efficiency may quite con- 
ceivably require the larger Corporations to call 
in the services of similar bodies of experts, who 
shall give to the management of public under- 
takings the careful supervision they need. The 
German Mayor has not an exact equivalent in 
England. He is a paid official, and is chosen 
by his Council for a term of years. His func- 
tions are both presidential and legal, and he may 
be said to combine the positions of both the 
English Mayor and Town Clerk. As a rule, 
therefore, he is a trained lawyer, thoroughly 
versed in the theory and practice of local gov- 
ernment, and the importance and emoluments 
of the office cause it to be greatly valued. 
In general, very commendable readiness is 



Local Government 273 

shown to accept and even to seek municipal 
office, even though the highest civic position, 
for the reason explained, is not open to ambi- 
tion. Not only so, but remarkable enterprise 
is thrown into local government, and many of 
the larger German towns have much to teach 
other countries in this respect, even if they can 
also learn from them in turn. Capitals are not 
always models of administration ; but it may 
be questioned whether on the whole there is 
a better governed city in the world than Berlin. 
The sanitary arrangements are exemplary of 
their kind. The sewage system is as perfect, 
alike in principle and machinery, as scientific 
knowledge and unsparing expense can make it. 
The drainage of the vast administrative area is 
conveyed by an elaborate "canalisation" sys- 
tem to an extensive farm some miles away, 
where it is utilised in irrigation. It is interest- 
ing to note, too, that this irrigation farm serves 
a double purpose, inasmuch as the labour em- 
ployed upon it is obtained from the adjacent 
Rummelsburg Workhouse, to which certain 
classes of Berlin's criminal and otherwise vicious 
population are despatched. The poorest of the 
poor are required at least to keep their dwellings 
clean, and in default the sanitary authorities 
summarily enter into temporary occupation, and 
do it for them, meanwhile sending the occu- 
pants to lodgings elsewhere. The calamity 
18 



2 74 German Life 

which befell Hamburg in the cholera epidemic 
of 1892, which took that city by surprise, and 
for a time paralysed its entire system of health 
control, has somewhat prejudiced Germany's 
reputation for public sanitation ; but the way in 
which the public health authorities of Berlin met 
the pest and conquered it spoke volumes for 
their preparedness and organising capacity. 
Though connected with Hamburg by a line of 
railway over which thousands of persons trav- 
elled each day, few cases were imported into 
Berlin over which the Sanitary Board had any 
control whatever, and the cholera fiend alto- 
gether failed to get a hold in the city. Railway 
passengers from the infected seaport were de- 
tained at the Berlin terminus and examined, and 
the suspicious of them were promptly bathed 
and their clothes stoved, before they were 
allowed to pass into the street. The most 
admirable arrangements were made for isolating 
every case which occurred, while an effectual 
system of quarantine and examination — whose 
grasp nobody could elude — was established, 
and so one of the most vulnerable towns in 
Germany, geographically speaking, was pro- 
tected against an unspeakable disaster. 

In Berlin, too, the public convenience in re- 
gard to transit is consulted in every possible 
way. The streets are excellently made and 
faultlessly maintained, thanks to the existence of 



Local Government 275 

a perfect army of scavengers, who haunt the 
thoroughfares day and night. To mention one 
matter only, the arrangements for the removal 
of snow^ in winter might be the envy of many 
an English town. Snow may fall the night 
through, yet in the morning little trace will be 
visible ; and the fact that the corporation of the 
city pays as much as ^35,000 in one winter for 
the removal of snow will attest the importance 
that is attached to facility of traffic and locomo- 
tion. A thorough system of tramway com- 
munication exists, under the careful oversight 
of the police authority, which similarly regulates 
the number, character, movements, and fares of 
every droschky which plies within the city 
boundaries. The fire brigade of Berlin is too 
highly esteemed abroad to call for special men- 
tion. The postal arrangements, too, are in 
every way admirable. A post-box is found 
at almost every street corner, and nowhere is it 
necessary to walk more than a couple of minutes 
before finding a post-office, and while the tele- 
graph service is both eificient and cheap, a 
pneumatic post for the speedy despatch of small 
letters has for many years proved a great boon 
to the inhabitants. Added to this, the State per- 
mits, both in Berlin and elsewhere, the opera- 
tion of a city post, — a private enterprise, which 
receives and delivers letters and small consign- 
ments, within the municipal boundaries only. 



276 German Life 

at a much lower charge than the imperial 
post. 

The welfare of the working classes is pro- 
moted by a number of municipal institutions 
which would be well worthy of special treatment 
were this the proper place. Under the care of 
the Town Council an efficient system of labour 
bureaux is maintained, and work-seekers are 
allowed to register themselves without fee ; 
while during the severe winter months, manual 
employment is offered to hona-fide working-men 
who are without means of subsistence. Free 
night shelters are also kept open for the home- 
less at the public expense. In public parks Ber- 
lin is not particularly rich considering its size ; 
but the reason is that in the Thiergarten it pos- 
sesses a noble wood of great dimensions within 
easy access, and that this is so excellently laid out 
and maintained, that it virtually serves as the 
breathing-place of the entire city. The subur- 
ban railways also offer every facility for reaching 
the attractive forests which surround the me- 
tropolis. Nevertheless, the industrial quarters 
all have their own little parks and playgrounds ; 
in busy centres disused graveyards, suitably 
planted and seated, are also thrown open to the 
public ; and the municipal authorities have 
turned many of the wide thoroughfares into 
avenues, which are not only beautiful in them- 
selves, but in summer offer welcome shade 



Local Government 277 

against the tropical sun which beats upon the 
sandy Mark of Brandenburg. In fine, Berlin is 
a bright example, and one that will bear careful 
study by English municipalities, of what can be 
done for the public health, convenience, and 
welfare where intelligence and enterprise go 
hand in hand. 

In provincial government a very different or- 
ganisation prevails. The system is highly com- 
plex and efficient enough as a system, but it 
allows much less scope for civic activity than is 
enjoyed in the towns. Here, especially, we are 
confronted with that State officialism which plays 
so large a part in German public life, and in 
noticing it the political aspect of the question 
cannot be overlooked. Taking Prussia still, as 
the best example available, the first administra- 
tive division of the country is seen to be into 
provinces, the heads of which are the Chief 
Presidents, paid officials appointed by the 
Crown, and to it alone responsible. These 
Chief Presidents exercise a general supervision 
over the administrative authorities of their pro- 
vinces, and their powers of control are very 
large. The province is divided into Government 
Districts (or High Bailiwicks, as they are called 
in Hanover). At the head of each is the Gov- 
ernment President, answering to the French 
Prefect. Below the Districts come the Circuits 
(the equivalent of the French arrondissement), 



278 German Life 

at the head of each of which is the Landrath, 
or Sub-prefect. The Circuit, which is the ad- 
ministrative unit, may be either (i) urban, where 
a town forms a separate Circuit for self-govern- 
ment purposes, or (2) rural, where various par- 
ishes or manors, or both, are united to form a 
Circuit. Rural Circuits are further divided for 
police purposes into petty sessional divisions or 
hundreds, each with an unpaid superintendent. 
For each of these administrative divisions there 
is a corresponding assembly. The province has 
first its Diet, which meets periodically for the 
transaction of purely provincial affairs, and is 
convened and dismissed by royal decree. For 
the management of current provincial business 
there is a Standing Committee, consisting of the 
Landes-director and a variable number of elected 
provincial deputies, all of whom are nominated 
by the Diet. Communication between the Diet 
and the Government is carried on through the 
Chief President of the province, who watches 
the doings of the Diet on the Government's 
behalf. Again, the Government District has its 
separate administration, with departments for 
internal affairs, church and school, domains, 
forests, and taxes, and the Chief President is, 
as a rule, its head. Finally, the Circuits have 
their Diets, elected by the towns, the rural 
parishes, and the large landowners, and presided 
over by the Landrdthe. 



Local Government 279 

It must not be imagined, however, that this 
system of local government, though containing 
so strong an elective element, gives to the peo- 
ple the freedom of action which is possessed in 
England. On the contrary. Government and 
bureaucratic influence makes itself very power- 
fully felt in every direction. Before the repre- 
sentative authorities are allotted their duties. State 
officials, as well as the police, have reserved for 
themselves many of the most important powers 
and functions of civil government. The Presid- 
ent of the Province, indeed, has an almost un- 
limited power of veto, which, on occasion, he 
exercises in the smallest as well as the largest 
matters. For example, a year or two ago the 
Municipal Council of Berlin decided by formal 
vote to send a wreath to the famous little ceme- 
tery of Friedrichshain, in which the victims of 
the March Revolution of 1848 are buried. That 
event, correctly or not, has always been re- 
garded by the popular parties of Prussia as mark- 
ing, and, indeed, creating, the era of constitutional 
government; and considering the part played in 
it by the King of Prussia of that day, it would 
be idle to view it as a piece of mere political 
incendiarism. In England a statue can be erected 
in the very precincts of Parliament in token that 
Lord Protector Cromwell occupies a recognised 
place in English history, and the Crown is too 
sensible because too stable to take offence. 



28o German Life 

The sentimental act of the Berlin Council was 
promptly prohibited by the terror-stricken 
President of the Province of Brandenburg, and 
it had, of course, to be abandoned. In England 
no power exists which could have maintained 
such a prohibition, and did it exist one can 
hardly imagine the veto being exercised. Yet it 
would be wrong to suppose that, either in town 
or country, any great dissatisfaction with the 
existing state of things prevails. The citizens 
bear the bureaucratic yoke patiently, even where 
it sits most heavily upon them, and console 
themselves with the reflection that, if everything 
is not done as well as it might be, the fault is 
not theirs. 

But, though civil government may not suffer, 
great harm is done all the same by the stifling of 
public spirit. No one can live long in Germany 
without being struck by the effects upon the 
national character of patriarchal and bureaucratic 
rule. These effects are manifold, and are ob- 
servable on every hand. Just as the military 
system has produced a people wonderfully 
amenable to order and discipline, so the bureau- 
cratic system of government has created a spirit 
of meek forbearance and unmanly dependence 
in civil life; the one result is excellent, the other 
in every way harmful. Hence come the absence 
of that vigorous public life which one is accus- 
tomed to find in countries of free institutions 



Local Government 281 

and a large indifference towards national and 
local affairs equally. And though, as has been 
said, many cities and towns are conspicuous for 
enlightened administration, it is generally where 
party feeling happens to be acute, and where 
Radicals and Socialists range themselves on the 
side of progress and enterprise in opposition to 
the Conservative preference for wariness and 
moderation in all things. The huge system of 
officialism has the further effect of discouraging 
the spirit of voluntary service. There are thou- 
sands of paid officials in Germany performing 
duties which in England are done as well by the 
people themselves, through elected bodies, or by 
private citizens, whose only reward is the respect 
of their neighbours. That is an evil in itself, 
but it produces another evil, which is that the 
spirit of emulation in public work is deadened. 
It is significant that in some States free citizens 
are by law compelled, if required, to discharge 
certain honorary duties in local administration — 
generally in connexion with the poor law — for 
three years at a time, unless incapacitated or dis- 
qualified. The paralysing effects of State patron- 
age are seen in other directions. The prevailing 
idea being that the State is responsible for every- 
body's welfare, and that what the State does not 
do cannot profitably be done at all, it is not 
strange that citizens should rarely come for- 
ward with large liberality in support of public 



282 German Life 

institutions and philantliropies of which there 
may be pressing need. The people have not 
been trained to these things, and it might almost 
seem that private concern for the general welfare 
is hardly desired. The hospitals, the orphanages, 
the almshouses, the universities, the schools, the 
libraries, even the churches are, as a rule, built, 
and also maintained, by the State and the paro- 
chial authorities and not by private munificence. 
There are, of course, other disadvantages, and 
one is the undue deference which the public is 
compelled to pay to bumbledom. The German 
has a marvellous respect for what is "official," 
and officialism is to him a sort of second provid- 
ence. I remember reading in a January issue 
of a leading journal the grave editorial announce- 
ment : "The first fortnight of the new year lies 
behind us. Thus one twenty-sixth part of the 
year has officially passed down the stream of 
time." It was the editor's unconscious homage 
to the peaked hat. But the bureaucrat has a 
way of riding the high horse which at times 
exhausts the patience even of the patient civilian. 
The superior classes of State servants form a 
caste as exclusive as do the officers of the army 
themselves, but it is the small officials, the in- 
flated Jacks-in-ofifice, who are always and every- 
where the most pretentious ; and in general no 
love is lost between the public and these, its 
nominal servants. There is a disposition on the 



Local Government 283 

part of the latter to forget their true position, and, 
because directly responsible to departmental 
superiors, to overlook the fact that their supreme 
master is no other than the much-abused, much- 
suffering, common man who pays the taxes 
and bears the State upon his shoulders. 

A case came to my knowledge where an Eng- 
lishman, newly come to a town in Prussia, served 
an energetic protest upon the taxing authorities 
for having so promptly notified him of his in- 
come taxation schedule, which was too high, 
and called for payment accordingly. They an- 
swered by raising him to a higher schedule. He 
protested again, and with greater emphasis. 
The result was that he found himself another 
notch up on the fiscal tally. On this, like a 
sensible Englishman, he paid his tax — now un- 
questionably very excessive — without further 
demur. Since then the English system of self- 
declaration has been introduced in Prussia in 
connexion with this tax, and the innovation 
offered officialdom a unique opportunity for dis- 
tinguishing itself. For the first two years the 
surveyors of taxes, acting on the genial assump- 
tion that all, or nearly all, men are liars, made it 
a rule to dispute the majority of the declarations. 
Discontent on the taxpayers' part led to further 
suspicion on the part of the taxing authority, 
which in any measuring of forces naturally had 
the better of the encounter. Questions such as 



284 German Life 

these were of common occurrence: "How 
much do you spend on holidays?" "How 
much goes in parties?" "What do you give 
away in presents?" "How much do you give 
your wife for pocket-money ? " The English 
plan of the three years' average was adopted, 
and with all the English impartiality. Thus a 
bank clerk was gravely admonished : "Did you 
receive any special gift on the occasion of your 
jubilee of service ? if so, it must be calculated 
on the basis of a three year's average." Another 
person in the same position who was known to 
take his luncheon on the premises was asked to 
declare, as a separate source of income, the 
amount allowed by his employers for the mid- 
day meal. These oddities were all related to the 
Prussian Lower House by indignant deputies. 
Yet if he is overbearing and wooden-headed at 
times, the public official is invariably faithful and 
conscientious. His fondness for detail is merely 
a part of the German spirit of thoroughness, and 
his pedantry but another phase of that unpracti- 
calness of character which is so often found 
amongst a nation of scholars. For devotion to 
duty and efficiency, no civil service in the world 
stands higher than that of Germany. 

The worst feature of State officialism in pro- 
vincial administration is that every functionary, 
whether of Province, District, or Circuit, must 
be a Government man, who is expected to think 



Local Government 285 

with Government mind, hear with Government 
ears, and speak with Government lips. One has 
only to imagine, say, the Chairmen of English 
County Councils subject to the same influence 
and restraint, in order to understand how dia- 
metrically different has been the development 
of provincial government in the two countries. 
So firmly laid down is the unwritten law requir- 
ing provincial administrative officials to devote 
themselves undividedly to the Government, that 
quite recently a number of Landrdthe were 
summarily removed from office and put on half- 
pay for having voted against a Ministerial meas- 
ure in the Prussian Upper House. The attempt 
was made by the party to which the displaced 
officials belonged to prove that the Government's 
retaliatory act was an infraction of the constitu- 
tion, one of the provisions of which stipulates that 
"The members of both Chambers are represent- 
atives of the whole nation ; they vote according 
to their free and independent convictions, and 
report subject to directions and instructions. 
They can never be called to account for the votes 
they give in the Chamber ; for the opinions they 
express there they can only be called to account 
inside the Chamber itself in accordance with the 
standing orders." But the Landrath cannot 
claim to be an independent deputy. He is in 
the service of the Government, which both ap- 
points and pays him, and by the terms of his 



286 German Life 

engagement, as tacitly understood, if not actually 
expressed, he must have no public interest 
which can clash with his duty to his employers. 
Injustice in the treatment of these rebellious offi- 
cials could hardly be alleged with reason.' No 
doubt the punishment awarded was rigorous ; 
but rigour is part of the system, and this system 
the Landrdthe completely understand, and do 
not fail to make use of, so far as their own au- 
thority goes, in dealing with inferior officials. 
In general, the discipline to which State servants 
are subjected in Germany is severe, but the rea- 
son is that the Government system itself is rigid 
and inflexible. 

It happens occasionally in England that mem- 
bers of a Government act the part of the candid 
friend towards their own colleagues, and frankly 
criticise measures for which they share a collec- 
tive responsibility. But whatever reflections 
may be called forth by such mental detachment 
in the inner circles of Cabinet intercourse, whose 
secrets were once supposed to be inviolabk atld 
sacred, the worst visible consequence is seen in 
the genial banter of next day's Opposition Press. 
In Germany Ministerial incompatibilities of this 
kind are hardly conceivable, but cases have oc- 
curred of high State functionaries departing from 
the rule which requires the absolute sinking of 
their individuality in the policy of the Govern- 
ment, and the result has been serious to the 



Local Government 287 

offenders. A few years ago a retired Prussian 
Minister Plenipotentiary, on the pension list, 
who was also a leading Conservative member 
of the House of Lords, had the hardihood to 
contribute to one of the organs of his party in 
the Berlin daily Press an article criticising ad- 
versely the commercial treaties which Count 
von Caprivi contracted. As the law requires 
that a State official shall obtain the assent of his 
superiors before rushing into print, and assent 
had in this case neither been asked nor obtained, 
his offence came before the Disciplinary Court 
which deals with contumelious officials, and he 
was dismissed the diplomatic service and de- 
prived of his pension. 

But if the host of State officials claim a large 
share in the work of civil government, there is 
still another repository of administrative power 
which stands entirely aloof from the public, 
though controlling public action in many ways. 
I refer to the police authority, which exercises 
many functions of government which with us 
belong of right to representative bodies, as well 
as legal functions which with us belong to 
courts of law, and many functions of both kinds 
which are peculiar to Germany. In the street, 
especially, the policeman claims an almost undi- 
vided sway. The municipal authorities are, of 
course, responsible for their maintenance in 
proper condition, and for the observance of all 



288 German Life 

sanitary measures which are deemed to be essen- 
tial in this age of germ theories and innumerable 
bacilli. But it is the supreme police official 
rather than the ratepayer who keeps these au- 
thorities in order, who reminds them of neg- 
lected responsibilities, suggests new ones, and, 
in general, plays the part both of municipal 
providence and public critic, with the important 
proviso that he is able to make his advice and 
censures felt as well as heard. Such a thing as 
the obstruction of a thoroughfare is not tolerated 
for a moment in a German town. 

The German is nothing if not logical ; and 
so the policeman, being convinced that public 
streets are intended for traffic, holds it to be 
contrary to common-sense to allow them to be 
obstructed, and he acts accordingly. The pro- 
fessional mendicant is not suffered to proclaim 
his manifold woes into the sympathetic ears of 
passers-by, nor the mutilated Lazarus to expose 
his wounds to public gaze. Begging in general 
is drastically repressed, and though it may fur- 
tively be tried in the grocer's or baker's shop, it 
usually takes the ingenious form of a proposal 
to exchange an unlimited amount of food for a 
solitary halfpenny, — which is, of course, the only 
one the wily purchaser has possessed for the last 
twenty-four hours. Street peddling is only per- 
mitted by licence, and the accompanying con- 
ditions must be scrupulously observed. Street 



Local Government 289 

crying must be engaged in warily, or the catch- 
penny may find himself suddenly marching in 
the direction of the guard-house. Does it snow ? 
You had better clear your door-front betimes, or 
the perambulating constable will have some- 
thing to say to you, and this though you may 
live in the very Ultima Thule of the municipal 
area. As it is winter, you probably wish to 
skate, and you go to the river for the purpose. 
"Forbidden !" is the legend which greets you 
on the brink. The ice is still a centimetre too 
thin, and until to-morrow the Police President 
will not allow it to be trodden on, for your 
safety and the mental composure of your rela- 
tives are not your affair, but his. The atten- 
tions which are paid by the police to incoming 
strangers are apt to strike the foreigner as super- 
fluous. No sooner does a sojourner arrive at his 
hotel or private lodging, than word must be sent 
to the nearest police office, and in the event of 
the stay exceeding a few days, a ponderous 
document must be filled up, giving information 
of various kinds concerning the nationality, 
home, social position, and business of the 
stranger, which the police supplement, if they 
are so disposed, by private inquiries of their 
own. But though regulations of this kind may 
seem to be intrusive and impertinent, there is no 
doubt about their utility. So complete is the 
surveillance exercised over the inhabitants of a 



290 German Life 

German town that the name, address, and call- 
ing of every adult are kept posted up in detail, 
with the result that it is possible, at a few 
moments' notice, to learn the exact whereabouts 
of any resident. 

Work-people of every kind are subjected to 
still severer control. They are required to keep 
what are called Labour Books, in which, besides 
name, age, and occupation, the places and dura- 
tion of past service, with brief testimonials from 
employers, are recorded. These books serve 
to introduce them to new employers, and also 
for the general purpose of legitimation, when 
needful. The service-books or cards of domestic 
servants may even contain full descriptions of 
their more conspicuous personal characteristics, — 
the colour and quantity of their hair, their com- 
plexion, the condition of their teeth, and so 
forth. And so it is with a hundred details of 
civil and private life. The policeman literally 
besets you behind and before, and has ever his 
(more or less) benevolent hand upon you. You, 
as a foreigner, may not like it, but that does not 
matter ; it is the law, custom, tradition of the 
country ; and those who have grown up under 
it no longer protest, but even prefer it so, for 
life becomes so much easier when the State 
provides special officials to think and act for 
you in half the emergencies of daily experience. 
There is yet in force in a district of North 



Local Government 291 

Germany a police regulation which prohibits the 
smoking of pipes or cigars in the streets of 
villages, and not long ago a clergyman was 
prosecuted for having ignorantly disobeyed it. 
Doubtless the regulation was issued at a remote 
date, when the houses were built of wood and 
straw, and the streets were narrow ; but though 
the conditions of its origin no longer continue, 
the decree survives, and, surviving, it must be 
employed, for let it once be admitted that laws 
are not meant to be enforced, and what will 
the policeman do then, poor thing ? It is less 
surprising that the regulation of public-houses 
and drinking-places should be very generally 
left to police orders, and it must be confessed 
that the police authority, as a rule, exercises its 
powers in this respect with great discretion. 
There is no magistrate to interpose between it 
and the licensees, and repeated illegality often 
leads to a summariness of treatment which 
would delight the heart of the English Pro- 
hibitionist, for the rule is to administer severe 
warning for a first offence, and to cancel the 
licence on repetition. It likewise fixes the 
times of opening and closing, — the closing hour 
being, indeed, termed the "police hour," — de- 
cides whether the waiters shall be male or 
female, and determines hygienic arrangements 
generally. The regulation of tramways, public 
vehicles, and lodging-houses is also a police 



292 German Life 

function. Private householders, too, are liable 
to police admonitions of a kind which in Eng- 
land are not even expected from the public 
health authority, and this is especially the case 
if they happen to interfere with the convenience 
of their neighbours. The theatres and places of 
entertainment are under the same control, and 
in Berlin even the censorship of plays falls to 
the Police President. 

In the domain of morals, indeed, the police- 
man is apt to magnify his power. Not long ago 
a Berlin art dealer, holding a royal warrant, was 
visited by an indignant constable, who pointed 
reprovingly to prints in the window of a Botti- 
celli "Venus" and Rubens's "Andromeda," the 
originals of which are in the Berlin Royal Gallery, 
and, denouncing them as obscene, required their 
immediate removal. Police outbreaks of prud- 
ery of the kind are of periodical occurrence in 
the metropolis. It was after one of them that 
a leading journal made the novel proposal that 
the statues on the Spree Bridge at the bottom 
of the Linden (irreverently called the Indecent 
Bridge) should be attired in trousers and petti- 
coats. More recently a curious case occurred at 
Magdeburg, where, in the interest of religion, 
the police authorities took upon themselves to 
revise the modern classical drama. In a play by 
the famous Holstein playwright, Friedrich Heb- 
bel, the words, "Karl, don't drink so much ; 



Local Government 293 

the father says that the devil is in the wine," 
are put into the mouth of one of the characters, 
and the answer comes, " But the priests say 
that God is in the wine. We shall see who is 
right." The play is an old one, but the repute 
of Hebbel and his writings had evidently not 
come to the knowledge of the intelligent police- 
man who happened to be on theatre duty at the 
time, for the actor who spoke Karl's reply was 
summoned to answer a charge of "improperly 
using the name of the Deity, and of interpolat- 
ing words of his own which the author could 
never have employed." Not until textual proof 
had been advanced that Hebbel really wrote the 
drama as it was played, was the Court satisfied 
that an act of profanity could not safely be 
imputed. As Hebbel had so written, it was all 
right ; had the words been added by a later 
hand, it would have been an indictable act of 
blasphemy. 

But it is in the control of political and p^-olic 
meetings that the police power asserts itself 
most arbitrarily. The German laws on the sub- 
ject of public assembly and industrial combina- 
tion have placed a large measure of authority in 
the hands of the poHce, as the politician and the 
working-man both know to their cost. Save in 
election times, when complete liberty of agita- 
tion, according to the constitution, ought to be 
enjoyed, there is no pretence of genuine liberty 



294 German Life 

of speech. When it is desired to hold a public 
meeting, the sanction of the police must first be 
obtained; and in order to this, the character and 
purpose of the meeting must be distinctly de- 
fined. Should the proceedings appear to the 
police official in attendance to depart from the 
lines laid down, he may at discretion bring 
the meeting to a close at once. At a political 
meeting held not long ago in a Saxon town — 
and Saxony is not as police-ridden as Prussia — 
to consider a Military Bill then before the country, 
the speaker (he was a Social-Democratic Deputy) 
happened in the course of his harangue to ap- 
peal to the working-men present to organise 
themselves in trade-unions, in the interest of 
industrial solidarity. As this subject had no- 
thing to do with the Army Bill, the police official 
present promptly declared the meeting to be 
dissolved, as "the speaker's remarks were not 
pertinent to the order of the day." It has even 
happened that a political meeting has been dis- 
solved owing to the too boisterous laughter in 
which it dared to indulge. In general, political 
agitation is discouraged, and, where possible, 
repressed by the police ; and the fining and im- 
prisonment of daring members of the popular 
parties, for such offences as "soliciting sub- 
scriptions without police permission," "making 
a speech at a grave-side without having an- 
nounced the intention so to do," "distributing 



Local Government 295 

hand-bills," and the like, are of the commonest 
occurrence both in town and country. But it is 
not merely political meetings that are thus under 
police ban. In a provincial town the election 
of a new Mayor was pending. Two members 
of the Town Council invited some of their col- 
leagues to a private conference on the subject, 
and a restaurant was named as a convenient 
place of assembly. The conference did not 
take place, however, though several of the 
Councillors chatted over the coming event in the 
general guest-chamber. But the police had 
heard of the intention to hold this dangerous 
gathering, for which permission had not been 
sought, and a constable was despatched to 
watch. Seeing several known Town Council- 
lors seated round a table, he walked up to them, 
and formally declaring their "meeting" dis- 
solved, he bade them go home. That was not 
all, for the two Councillors who summoned a 
conference which did not take place were prose- 
cuted and fined, — it would puzzle the shrewdest 
judge to say why. In another provincial town 
a local politician gave notice to the police of his 
wish to hold and address a meeting to consider 
public questions. Permission was refused by 
the Police Superintendent on the grounds that 
(i) "Your person is entirely unknown ; (2) the 
order of the day is quite indefinite ; and (3) the 
meeting would not be over by nine o'clock." 



296 German Life 

In reality each of these reasons, given the legiti- 
macy of the meeting in itself, was fictitious, — 
an arbitrary abuse of the law by the police au- 
thority, against which there was no appeal. 
And how far the law may be abused with im- 
punity was illustrated not long ago by a singular 
incident which occurred at Kiel. During an 
election there two Socialists were arrested by a 
gendarme for circulating electioneering literature, 
— a proceeding perfectly legal at such a time, — 
and when complaint was made to his superior 
and recompense demanded, according to the 
law of the land, for wrongful imprisonment, the 
reply was given that the gendarme's act was 
quite proper, since he had not heard that the 
election had begun. Such a decision recalls 
Kant's well-known dictum, "When justice 
ceases to be done men live no longer to any 
purpose." 

So, too, work-people cannot meet for the 
purely personal object of considering their wages 
and conditions of employment without the prior 
permission of the police, which will not neces- 
sarily be given, and should a meeting of Poles be 
held to discuss matters of interest to them, the 
constable present has a right to require the use 
of German, so that he may follow what is said, 
though not one in fifty of those present may 
know any but their native language. The law 
of assembly, and still more the mode in which 



Local Government 297 

it is enforced, might, indeed, hiave the deliberate 
purpose of discouraging public meetings of all 
kinds, and so of preventing the growth of healthy 
public opinion. What misguided endeavours 
of this kind lead to has been shown by the ab- 
ject failure of the old coercive measures against 
Social Democracy, which never spread so rapidly 
as when most repressed and forced into secret 
and subterranean methods of agitation. 

An important factor in the police service of Ber- 
lin and other large towns is the secret detective. 
Over Berlin especially the secret police system 
spreads like a net, and though natural exaggera- 
tion probably prevails as to the omnipresence 
of its mysterious agents, there is no doubt about 
the effectual oversight which they are able at 
command to exercise upon the public life and 
movements of the population. Every day a 
host of these emissaries of the law assemble at 
the police headquarters to receive orders. Very 
burgher-like persons indeed they are as a rule, 
attired faultlessly, according to the latest ideas 
of the man-milliner ; some might even pass 
unsuspected in the politest circles of society. 
They are employed for all sorts of purposes, 
though naturally the detection of the more se- 
cret forms of crime is their principal mission. 
Wherever great concourses of people assemble 
out-of-doors, and the vigilance of the uniformed 
constables is likely to be overtaxed, a contingent 



298 German Life 

of secret criminal officers is sent to mix in the 
crowds, there to observe, hear, and act where 
necessary. The regular policeman passes and 
repasses these well-drilled spies, yet, though he 
knows them as his own kindred, no word or look 
of recognition is exchanged. In these days of 
"political attempts," when every Crown is more 
or less beset by unseen danger from the enemies 
of legality and order, the visit of a royal person- 
age to Berlin brings into activity all the skill and 
cunning of which the criminal police depart- 
ment is capable. No one knows it save as a 
theoretical certainty, yet in every crowd that 
lines a royal progress, or gazes into the privacy 
of a royal palace, move to and fro these secret, 
argus-eyed guardians of order. That, however, 
is high life, indeed, compared with some of the 
secret detective's functions. He may another 
day be commissioned to unravel some mystery 
in which the baser elements are concerned. 
Then, suitably attiring himself, he will seek the 
haunts of crime, and therein will consort as 
though .. himself belonging to the powers of 
darkness, passing from low drinking-house to 
lower gambling den, entering into the dissipa- 
tions of their habitues, saying no more than he 
need, and making himself as inconspicuous as 
he may, yet for ever watching, listening, ferret- 
ing, and gathering the toils of justice round 
unsuspecting plotters against society. But the 



Local Government 299 

sans-ciilotte and leveller of to-day may to-mor- 
row be an up-to-date dandy, dining in the best 
restaurant of the city, surreptitiously seeking 
traces of some fast-living sharper who is known 
to be pursuing mischievous ends. So it is 
that the secret policeman in his time plays many 
parts. It is an exciting life, offering keen at- 
tractions to those who follow it for its romantic 
possibilities, though not without a dangerous 
side. 

While, however, the ends of justice are doubt- 
less served by this system, there are counterbal- 
ancing disadvantages, of which the principal is 
that it is carried to lengths which would certainly 
not be tolerated in a free country. I remember 
being one day seated in a Berlin drawing-room 
overlooking the street, when my host suddenly 
interrupted the lively political conversation, and 
hastening to the window, closed it with a 
nervous gesture. Asked to explain, he an- 
swered simply : "The police are everywhere 
and hear everything." His apprehension was, 
of course, foolish and groundless, but it was 
significant as an evidence of the all-prevalent 
idea that the police exist to get people into 
trouble, and, hence, are always on the look-out 
for victims. Even an illusion has its cause and 
explanation, and the reason for this exaggerated 
fear of police intrusion must be sought in the 
unfortunate position which the police system, 



300 German Life 

and the policeman as its representative, occupy 
in tlie civic life of Germany. Police and public 
have only one thing in common, — mutual dis- 
like ; and it would be difficult to say on v/hich 
side the antipathy is the stronger. As the 
policeman is under no sort of public control, 
— for the municipalities are not permitted to 
concern themselves with the protection of pub- 
lic peace and order, — he is apt to be arbitrary 
and masterful in behaviour, and to rule the 
street as a sergeant rules the drill-ground. The 
public may be, as a famous man has said, an 
ass ; but even asses, so far as is known, do not 
like to be eternally cuffed and kicked. Hence 
the cavalier treatment which the public too 
often receives from the many-buttoned officer of 
justice engenders on its part a natural resent- 
ment and mistrust, and two eminently useful 
persons, who have every reason in the world 
for reciprocal respect, the law-keeper and the 
law-defender, never succeed in winning each 
other's confidence. 




CHAPTER XIII 

THE NEWSPAPER AND ITS READERS 

THE newspaper Press, in general, takes its 
character from the public to which it ap- 
peals and the public life whose movements it is 
intended to reflect ; and, taking newspapers 
and newspaper readers in the mass, every coun- 
try probably has just the Press which it deserves. 
In Germany we are confronted with several 
important facts which, as they were bound 
to do, have powerfully acted upon the pop- 
ular literature of the day and week. It has 
been shown that political life is narrow, 
that public opinion carries comparatively little 
weight in the ruling circles, and that personal 
liberty is severely restricted. The results upon 
the newspapers could hardly have been other 
than they are : a restricted influence, lack of 
status, and harassing difficulties at the hands 
of both the law and the police. That the Press 
has very little influence on the Government 
will readily be understood, but it fails also to 
form and direct public opinion to any large 
301 



302 German Life 

degree. There is not one journal in Germany 
wliich, in either circulation or influence, can be 
named in the same breath with the least of ten 
or a dozen of London's principal daily news- 
papers ; and outside the capital the best of 
Berlin's journals only circulate in isolated num- 
bers, and in the south hardly at all. It is the 
misfortune of the German Press that the special 
laws for the regulation of newspapers and serial 
publications date from times of great political 
unrest and agitation. Hence it is perhaps inevit- 
able that restrictive and regulative measures 
no longer in harmony with the ideas and 
necessities of the present age should have 
been preserved. Liberty of the Press has been 
one of the leading political watchwords of the 
reform party during the last three-quarters of 
a century, yet the battles won in this domain 
of national freedom have hitherto been of the 
slightest importance. The Press does not, it 
is true, stand where it stood at the beginning 
of the century, when even visiting-cards could 
not be printed without the solemn assent of 
the public censor, and when political prints 
which annoyed the Government were summar- 
ily suppressed at the mere beck of a Minister 
or his subordinate. Yet little ground has been 
won since the harsher features of the measures 
passed fifty years ago for the repression of demo- 
cratic excesses were abandoned. 



The Newspaper and its Readers 303 

The legislation passed soon after the estab- 
lishment of the Empire (that of 1874) did, 
indeed, concede, in principle at least, the "free- 
dom of the Press," and it abandoned a formal 
censorship ; but an aggravating form of control 
is still exercised by the police, whose authority 
over the Press is greater in reality than it seems 
to be from the letter of the statute. It is no 
longer necessary, as it once was, to obtain 
sanction for the issue of each number before 
it is sent into the world, but it is still the 
legal duty of a publisher to lay a copy of his 
journal, directly it reaches the press, before the 
police authority, which acknowledges its receipt 
by a formal sealed certificate, bearing the num- 
ber of the issue and the day and even the hour 
of delivery. This copy an informal censor 
revises ; and in the event of any article being 
objectionable he may order the immediate con- 
fiscation of the whole issue, or a court of law, 
which in such matters works with wondrous 
speed, may do so for him. As the police and 
judicial authorities have wide discretion in the 
determination of editorial culpability, this power 
of confiscation is felt to be a harsh one. This in- 
cident occurred a year or two ago in Berlin. The 
leading Liberal newspaper, the l^ossische Zei- 
tung, a journal of eminent respectability, had 
published an article, moderate in spirit and terms, 
on " Governmental bureaucracy." The Prussian 



304 German Life 

Minister of Justice sent two police commissaries 
to the newspaper office to inquire the authorship. 
The editor declined to divulge his contributor's 
name, on which the commissaries called in a 
number of police constables and ordered them 
to ransack the editorial rooms, and even the 
printing office, in search for the manuscript, 
which, of course, was not found. Here is an 
illustration of the same thing elsewhere : "Yes- 
terday afternoon three police officers made a 
fruitless search in the offices of the Frankfurter 
Zeitung, at the instance of the Hamburg Court, 
for the manuscript of an article concerning the 
North German Bank." Only last year the re- 
sponsible editor of a Socialist journal in the 
provinces was prosecuted for having republished 
from a foreign newspaper an article held to 
reflect improperly on the Emperor. The editor 
advanced proof that the article appeared without 
his knowledge, and while he was absent from 
duty. Moreover, the acting editor voluntarily 
came forward and confessed that he had pub- 
lished the article on his own responsibility. 
The latter was sentenced to three years' impris- 
onment for his pains, but his chief was given 
four years' imprisonment as well. 

While the Socialist Law existed, the powers 
of the police were far more extensive than now, 
and the rigour with which they were used was 
shown in the wholesale extermination of news- 



The Newspaper and its Readers 305 

papers of Socialistic tendencies which took place 
between the years 1878 and 1890. Since that 
law disappeared Socialist journals have sprung 
up again in abundance, though the experience 
gained by their conductors during the era of 
repression does not enable them to steer clear of 
friction with the authorities. Fear of the law is, 
in fact, the one great plague of the German edi- 
tor's life. For it is the editor, and not the pub- 
lisher, who first comes in for punishment when 
the newspapers transgress the Press laws, 
though theoretically not only publisher, editor, 
and news-agent, but also the compositors and 
machinists of a printing oifice are equally indict- 
able when the newspaper has done wrong. So 
frequent are prosecutions of editors that many 
newspapers are compelled to maintain on their 
staffs what are known as "sitting-editors," 
whose special function it is to serve in prison 
(colloquially sitien or "sit") the terms of de- 
tention that may be awarded for a too liberal 
exercise of the critical faculty. 

One of the oddest judgments passed under the 
Press Law — one, by the way, for which there 
was no possible legal justification — emanated 
quite recently from a Magdeburg court. An 
editor was convicted of a certain offence, and 
the appeal made for leniency, on the ground 
that it was his first prosecution, was rejected, 
because "the newspaper which he conducted 



3o6 German Life 

had frequently been punished before." Of 
course, in strict law, newspapers as such are not 
punishable, and are not recognised as "criminal 
personalities" ; but the judgment virtually set 
up this strange theory, and had the effect of 
making an editor responsible for the shortcom- 
ings of all his predecessors in office, and of ap- 
plying to journalism the doctrine of hereditary 
sin. The police, too, regulate the public sale of 
newspapers, and decide whether they shall be 
cried in the streets or not, and in BerUn special 
editions cannot be published without the prior 
sanction of this authority. In the matter of false 
news the German courts of law have a short 
way with the catch-penny newspaper which is 
at least deserving of consideration in other coun- 
tries. Should a newspaper publish news of the 
kind, its publisher, editor, and everybody con- 
nected with its publication and distribution may 
be brought to book. Not long ago a special 
edition was placed on the streets of Berlin dur- 
ing the evening hours on the strength of a 
rumoured attempt on a European sovereign. 
The story proved to be fictitious from beginning 
to end, and, a prosecution being instituted, the 
proprietor was sentenced to nine months' im- 
prisonment for fraud, and was fined £2 4s. for 
the unlawful sale of the paper ; the printer of 
the sheet was fined £\^ for aiding and abetting 
in the fraud, and £\ for transgressing the Press 



The Newspaper and its Readers 307 

Law ; and three news-agents were fined as ac- 
complices in this imposition on the public. 

A peculiar journalistic institution in Germany 
is the semi-official {offtcios) Press, — that part of 
the Press which represents the views of the 
Government. Yet, in truth, this is an institu- 
tion which was not made in Germany at all, but 
in England, for Walpole both employed useful 
writers in the Press and paid them handsomely. 
It is the Prussian and Imperial Governments 
which have particularly fostered this questionable 
form of journalism. The semi-official Press ex- 
isted before Prince Bismarck came to the front, 
yet that statesman gave to it an importance 
which it never before possessed, and which it 
has not enjoyed since he disappeared from pub- 
lic life. It was originally a measure of fear, re- 
sorted to when the "freedom of the Press" 
(precious phrase ! ) was enacted in Prussia. 
Hitherto the newspapers had been repressed and 
restricted in every possible way, and to criticise 
the Government and its policy frankly was an 
offence only to be expiated by confiscation of 
property and sacrifice of personal liberty, — per- 
haps by temporary exile. When the Press ac- 
quired a certain measure of independence, and 
learned to use it, the apprehension overcame 
the Government that resentment and retaliation 
would follow, and that the emancipated jour- 
nals would avenge the wrongs of the past by 



3o8 German Life 

unmeasured hostility to their former persecutors. 
Hence the plan was devised of setting one news- 
paper to watch and counteract another, to follow 
and answer its criticisms, and to uphold the 
Government, its sayings and doings, under all 
circumstances. In Prince Bismarck's time mone- 
tary help was not withheld by the Government 
from newspapers which lent their columns to 
the exposition and endorsement of Ministerial 
policy — good or bad — but, as a rule, the 
" honour " of such a high association and the 
frequent reception of inspired articles and news 
announcements were regarded as acknowledg- 
ment enough. Prince Bismarck went so far 
as to endeavour to attach important English 
newspapers to the wires of his Cabinet, though 
without success. 

As it still exists, the semi-official journal is a 
vehicle for informal Ministerial pronouncements 
upon current political questions, and, though 
the public has a fairly accurate idea as to what is 
semi-official in such journals and what is simply 
editorial and carries no further weight, the tie 
between the Government and its organs is a 
loose one, and when desirable it is generally 
possible to disclaim responsibility for utterances 
which may prove to be inconvenient or prema- 
ture. From the English standpoint it is difficult 
to see wherein the real advantage of semi-official 
journalism consists, save to the newspapers 



The Newspaper and its Readers 309 

privileged, while the disadvantages are obvious. 
The late Count von Caprivi was so disappointed 
with the failure of his " body-organs " to do 
their duty well, and to rise to the occasion when 
a great emergency occurred, that he first thought 
of establishing a new semi-official journal on 
improved lines, which should be more effectively 
under Ministerial control than any hitherto, and 
then seriously considered the repudiation of 
semi-official journalism altogether, but he re- 
signed before either course was adopted. 
Perhaps no stronger condemnation of the in- 
stitution has been spoken than that which came 
from a prominent Conservative publicist : 

" Its success has been very small, but its cor- 
rupting influence on the other hand very great. 
The publishers of these dependent organs under- 
take to defend the doings of the Government 
under all circumstances. It is their duty to 
demonstrate the Government's infallibility. 
Such a position is, for any man of character, so 
distressing that only seldom are able writers — 
hardly ever honourable ones — willing to accept 
it and the humiliations which it entails ; thus it 
comes about that the semi-official Press is gen- 
erally in bad hands. Yet these dependent news- 
papers are really of no value, because their 
character is speedily known, even though the 
Government should deny it. Certainly in a free 
country the Government should not ignore the 



3IO German Life 

Press ; on the contrary, the more it looks for 
support to active political parties the more must 
it desire to be ably represented in literature, and 
where there is a strong Ministry there will be 
Ministerial newspapers corresponding in char- 
acter. Nor is there any reason why a Minis- 
terial party should not continue to support an 
organ. But there should be no Press that is 
supported by public money, or by Governmental 
bodies as such, nor yet a Press Bureau, which 
gives the parole to the Ministerial organs, and 
lays its cuckoo-eggs in as many strange nests 
as possible." 

But the few recognised semi-official organs 
do not nearly represent the journalistic influence 
which is at the command of the Government. 
In the provinces a host of small news-sheets are 
ever ready to do its bidding, and to defend its 
policy through thick and thin. These are the 
so-called Kreishlatter and Amtsbldtter, — " Dis- 
trict newspapers," — which have the privilege of 
publishing the paid official announcements. The 
revenue derived therefrom never makes mil- 
lionaires, but it is a welcome addition to the 
income of a small newspaper, whose proprietor 
is expected to pay the Government back in flat- 
tery and good words. 

In contents and conduct the average German 
newspaper of the better sort has the appearance 
of immaturity, and suggests a reading public of 



The Newspaper and its Readers 3" 

which the editor and his colleagues do not stand 
in any great awe. The literary standard is de- 
cidedly a high one, and to many daily journals 
writers of national celebrity regularly contribute ; 
but while learning is present, prodigious and 
impressive, dulness is apt to go hand in hand, 
and of genuine enterprise there is little trace. 
The signed article is common, and alongside of 
it a system of semi-anonymity is followed. 
Here the contributions are marked by figures, 
letters, or other signs, not indeed understood by 
readers generally, yet enabling wide circles to 
identify the writers. Such journals as these are 
strongly political, and their survey is as wide as 
the globe itself, for the German editor is in gen- 
eral very well informed and versatile, and his 
cosmopolitan interests do him the utmost credit. 
His passion for abstract reasoning may depre- 
ciate the practical value of his reflections, but he 
is painstaking in the acquisition of facts, thor- 
ough-going in his treatment of them, and he 
never has doubts. Art, letters, and the drama are 
certainly taken more seriously by the German 
than the English Press of the first, and, indeed, 
of every rank. Here, whatever be its other 
shortcomings, the German newspaper excels. 
Not only is space found for able contributions on 
these subjects in the daily issues, but it is a com- 
mon custom to publish a free literary supplement 
with the Sunday number, and this may always 



312 German Life 

be taken up with the certainty of finding readable 
essays of a belletristic character. The feuilleton 
is not universal, though some of the best-known 
German journals would as soon think of omit- 
ting the story which appears daily "under the 
rule " at the foot of the first page as of with- 
holding from the Government a daily mead of 
praise or blame, as the case may be. How little 
the very best of the German newspapers can 
claim to be genuinely national in influence and 
circulation may be judged by the remarkable 
prominence which is given to what is known in 
England as "local news." The most trivial in- 
cidents of the street and of private life, such as 
are barely recorded by the English country news- 
paper, fill daily not a few columns of metro- 
politan journals which are constantly regarded 
in England as representative of national opinion. 
The truth is, that with all its imperial status and 
its importance in international politics, the intel- 
lectual air of Berlin is distinctly provincial. 

Of the German provincial Press little need be 
said, save that it is very provincial indeed. It 
is noteworthy, however, that the large weekly 
journal has not the vogue which it has in Eng- 
land. A daily issue of the smallest and most 
insignificant kind is preferred to a weekly issue 
of infinitely higher merit ; and the German plan 
of subscribing for newspapers by the quarter, 
half-year, and year makes the publication of 



The Newspaper and its Readers 313 

daily sheets easier, for though the impression 
may be a small one, it is always certain. There 
is before me a typical daily newspaper issued in 
an unknown provincial town. It has four pages 
of execrably printed text, altogether making 
about a quarter of an ordinary eight-page Eng- 
lish journal, though the cost is proportionate, — 
barely more than a penny farthing per week. 
The front page is devoted to local news, the back 
page to advertisements, another half page is 
taken up by the femlleton, and of the rest a full 
page goes to foreign news, — Swiss finance, 
Italian labour troubles, American tornadoes and 
bankruptcies, — to which are added an inspiring 
report on the latest sea serpent and a few hu- 
morous paragraphs to fill up. It is no very 
sensational fare, but it is a daily newspaper, and 
that is all that is needed. 

What is euphemistically known in England 
as the "religious" Press is absolutely without 
counterpart in Germany. There are small cleri- 
cal news-sheets of a very innocent order, in- 
tended mainly for the parsonage study ; and the 
Church Guilds of working-men (both Protestant 
and Roman Catholic) have their sectional organs, 
but popular newspapers dealing with ecclesiasti- 
cal and religious interests on broad lines do not 
exist, and it is not certain that if they did there 
would be a great demand for them. "The re- 
ligious newspapers ; what are they for ? " asked 



314 German Life 

of me a well-informed German, to whom this 
peculiarly Anglo-Saxon institution had been 
named : "I suppose for sick people, or those 
who live where there are no churches?" Holy 
simplicity ! He did not know that the English 
religious Press exists for the purpose of political 
propagandism, and of proving to the secular 
journals that they have no monopoly of party 
rancour. Yet religion is not excluded from the 
German secular Press to the extent that it is 
from the English. Each has its ecclesiastical 
reports, but, in addition, the German editor is 
not above preaching a little on his own account 
occasionally in the columns which are reserved 
for the expression of his views. Especially is 
this the case when the great festivals of the 
Church come round. Then the rationalistic 
editor of the most Radical of journals will, in 
the sincerest and most matter-of-fact way, ex- 
hibit a knowledge of things religious which is 
as peculiar as it is extensive. 

The only suggestion worthy of imitation which 
the advertising columns of the German Press 
offer is the care which is taken to keep the news 
and the business portions of the newspaper 
apart. Though not so numerous, the advert- 
isements are, in appearance, far more obtrusive 
than- in the average English journal ; but, in com- 
pensation, they are, as a rule, given a place 
alone, generally in separate sheets, an act of 



The Newspaper and its Readers 3^5 

consideration wiiich the English newspaper 
reader would count as a virtue in his favourite 
publishers. On the other hand, the German 
newspaper receives many advertisements of a 
kind it would be better without. It has its 
"agony" column, as the Times has, but it is 
alone in having its marriage market, and a very 
undignified market it is. Advertisements like 
the following, which are taken at random from 
newspapers of the highest stdnding, do not con- 
fer dignity on the Press, or reflect creditably 
upon the people who pay high prices for their 
appearance: "Manager of an old institution, 
of pleasant exterior, seeks a pretty, presentable 
lady (widow), very strong, weight seventy-five 
to eighty-five kilogrammes, but of fine figure, 
as helpmate. " "I seek a husband ; how shall 
1 go about it ? Kind advice is sought by," etc. 
"An Israelite lady, twenty-three years old, 
beautiful, of a highly esteemed family, with a 
dowry of eight million marks (^40,000), desires 
to become acquainted with a gentleman, count 
or baron, free from prejudice against her race, 
with a view to marriage. An introduction may 
easily be arranged to take place in a health resort 
to be named, and the tact and discretion of the 
lady may be relied upon. The advertiser is 
prepared to be baptised into the religion of the 
gentleman." 
The domestic joys and sorrows also occupy a 



3i6 German Life 

place in the German newspaper which the na- 
tional reserve would not approve in England. 
The announcements of births and deaths are not 
restricted to bare facts, but are weighted with 
an amount of detail which would shock the 

English sensibility. Thus : "J S begs 

to announce, with great pleasure, that his wife 
has given birth to a healthy and heavy boy." 
"On the Emperor's birthday God has made us 
happy by the birth of a healthy boy." "The 
happy birth of a healthy and strong girl is an- 
nounced by A S and wife." "Just ar- 
rived, a strong boy. — S (L and wife." 

" I hereby announce to relatives and friends the 
happy delivery of my dear wife, Clara, of a 
healthy boy." Betrothals are regularly announced 
in the newspapers, and it not infrequently hap- 
pens that when an engagement to marry is 
abruptly broken off the parents on both sides 
publish to the world independent and not neces- 
sarily identical versions of the affair. The lady's 
parents naturally let it be understood that it has 
taken place entirely by their wish, while the 
bridegroom's explanation depends, of course, 
upon his good-nature and sense of chivalry. 

Of obituary notices the following is a fair 
sample, save that it is shorter than usual : " To- 
day died suddenly, at 8.45 a.m., our dear, heart- 
good, beloved father, father-in-law, grandfather, 
brother-in-law, and uncle, the rentier C 



The Newspaper and its Readers 317 

T , in the eightieth year of his age. The 

mourning relatives ask for unspoken sympathy." 
Novel in their way, too, are the eulogistic me- 
morial notices and verses frequently published 
on the anniversaries of the deaths of respected 
citizens by friends and admirers. It is a harm- 
less and even admirable way of paying tribute to 
departed worth, and a good set-off against the 
want of appreciation from which even the best 
of men and women may suffer during life. 




INDEX 

Address, modes of, 39 

Agricultural labourer, the, 80, 81 ; wages, 82 ; his dwelling, 85 

Army, the, 92 ; cost, <^^ ; disciplinary advantages, 96 ; relation 

to the civil population, 106 " 

Arndt, Ernst M., i 

Baths, the, 226 

Berlin, workers' wages, 49; rents, 59, 197 

" Berliner," characteristics of the, 236 

Bismarck, Prince, 6, 14, 38, 165, 218, 307, 308 

Bosse, Minister, 126 

Bureaucracy, the, 280 

Cafe, the, 244 j^. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 5, 207 

Church festivals, the, 154 

Civil marriage, the, 147 

Commercial progress, 13 

Constitution, the imperial, 3, 126, 143, 257, 259, 264 

Cookery, 202 

Co-operation, 57 

Costume, rural, 72 

Customs, popular, 73, 154 

Dancing saloon, the, o. 
Decorations, 38 

319 



320 Index 

Domestic arrangements, 196 
Drama, the, 207 

Drinking habit, the, 60, 244, 248 
Duelling, 1 10 

Education, public, 122 ; cost, 134 

Education versus wealth, 23 ; diffusion of, 25, 122 

Elections, parliamentary, 260 

Emperor, his prerogatives, 6 

Emperor William I., 111 ; William II., 112, 120, 167 

Empire, how constituted, 2 ; stability, 9 ; relation to States, 7, 

10, 14, 256 
English and German defensive expenditure compared, 93, 101 
English dramatic taste, 208 

Falk, Minister, 126 

Family life, 62, 186 

Flat system, the, 198 

Frederick the Great and popular freedom, 260 

Freitag, Gustav, 32 

German and English defensive expenditure compared, 93, loi 

Girls, education of, 183, 190 

Gneisenau and army reform, 104 

Gneist, Rudolf von, 9 

Gossler, Minister von, 126 

Government, imperial, 257 ; municipal, 271 ; provincial, 277 

Gymnasia, the, 130, 185 

Gymnastic clubs and exercises, 129, 217 

Harnack, Professor, 169 
Hausfrau, the, 186 
Heating, domestic, 199 
Heine on London, 246 
Henry the Fowler, 4 
Hohenlohe, Prince, 21 



Index 321 



Hohenzollern family, 5 
Holy Roman Empire, 2, 34 
Home life, 185/:, 196 
Honours and titles, 33 

Jahn, Friedrich Ludwig, 218 
Jews, the, 125, 143 
Journalism, German, 10, 301 

Landrath, the, 278 
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 55 
Letters, German, 31 

March Revolution of 1848, 9 

Marriage customs, 77 

Military service and system, 92 ; advantages and disadvantages 

weighed, 96, 217 ; popularity, 100 
Money, influence of, 22 
Morality, 61, 180 
Music, 214 

Nobility, the, 33 

Officer caste, the, 26, 106 
Old and New Germany, 17, 18 

Pan-Germanism, 15 

Peasantry, the, 68 

Pleasures and pastimes, 207, 243 

Poles, the, 82, 86, 1 76 

Police law and the policeman, 193, 260, 287 

Political life, 193, 252, 293 

Press, the, 9, 30 

Professional life, 27 

Professional salaries, 32, 128, 135, 137 

Protection, effect on cost of living, 52 

Protestantism, 170 

Provincial government, 277 



322 Index 

Provincial life, amenity of, 25 
Prussia, relation to the Empire, 3-7 
Public spirit, lack of, 280 

Rationalism, 125, 165, 172 

Religious, divisions, 124, 142 ; life and thought, 152_^. ; ration- 
alism, 158^. 
Rents, in towns, 59 ; in the country, 197 
Reuter, Fritz, 32 

Roman Catholicism, 125, 142, 170 
Rural, life and labour, 68 ; customs, 73 

SCHMOLLER, GustaV, 24 

Schools, the, 122 

Schulze-Delitsch and co-operation, 57 

Second ballot, the, 267 

Secret police, the, 297 

Singing, the passion for, 215 

Social divisions, 22 

Social prejudices, 25 

Social reform movements, 53, 64, 276 

Socialism and the working classes, 55, 172, 195 

Sports, 216, 217 

State and professions, the, 27 

State and religion, 142 

State versus Empire, 6, 14 

Students' fencing clubs, 119 

Sudermann, Hermann, 32 

Suicide in Saxony, 1 75 

Superstitions, 75 

Theatre, the, 207 

Titles and honours, 33 

Tourist clubs, 223 

Town Council, the, 271 

Trade-unions and the working classes, 48, 52, 53 



Index 323 



Ukiversities, the, 25, 135 ; and women, 190 
University Extension movement, the, 65 

William I., Emperor, in ; William II., 112, 120, 167 
Witchcraft, belief in, 7^ 
Woman, position of, 182 

Women workers, wages of, 50 ; social position, 194 
Working classes, the urban, 46 ; hours of labour, 47 ; wages, 
49 ; organisation, 53 ; politics, 35 ; dwellings, 58 

Zedlitz. Minister von. 126 



^^-)^1.^^ 



By EDMONDO DE AMICIS. 



©n Blue TlGlatei*, 8°, 60 illustrations . . $2.25 

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tions 2.00 

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trations 2.00 

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trations . . . . . . .2.25 

The illustrated editions of these four books are 

put up together (in jackets) in a box . . 9.00 

StuDies of iparis. 8° 1.25 

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Library Edition, tvo\s,.,%° {^vihQy^ . . lo.oo 



" I take pleasure in stating that the editions of my works 
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set, been published with my authorization, and that the 
publishers have remitted to me each year the author's 
share of the proceeds of their sales." 

Edmondo de Amicis. 

Turin, Dec. 26, 1890. 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York and London 



IBcilce^Xcttvce 



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A Survey. By Elisabeth Luther Gary. With 25 
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CHRISTINA 

By Elisabeth Luther Gary. With 27 illustrations 

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Large 8°, gilt top (in a box) . . . $3-75 

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